


that which lingers

by bruises for tomorrow (justalowhum)



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Eggsy can see ghosts, Fix-It of Sorts, Heavy Angst, Kinda, M/M, Night Terrors, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Esteem Issues, Sexual Tension, Suicidal Thoughts, Unresolved Sexual Tension, a lot of lists, blood lots of blood, guess who isn't dead, i would like to both thank and blame Richard Siken for this god bless this man, no major character deaths i promise, pain ensues, shout-out to the Queen for her cameo, showers as safe spaces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 05:18:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4653813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justalowhum/pseuds/bruises%20for%20tomorrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Here is something that Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (aged 24 and 3/4) never knew to expect from ghosts:</em>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <em>- Sometimes their absence hurts worse than their presence. </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	that which lingers

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank everyone who's withstood all my whining and crying during the writing of this fic, and especially the wonderful, wonderful artist I've been blessed with for this Bang.
> 
> This is my firstborn fic, so please be gentle but don't hold back if you find any typos or such!
> 
> EDIT: There's an ongoing russian translation by the lovely just-remember-who-you-are <3 (baskervl ) (?????????)  
> https://ficbook.net/readfic/3822478

* * *

 

 

 

_“What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be alive. Something dead that doesn’t know it’s dead.”_

—

| 

Richard Siken,  
Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede  
  
---|---  
  
 

* * *

 

 

One day Eggsy’s dad comes home with a man glaring a hole into the back of his head.

The stranger, too busy trailing after the younger man, doesn’t introduce himself, nor does he get an introduction from either mom or dad. He doesn’t seem bothered by it, though. He seems content enough to keep shadowing Lee wherever he goes –the master bedroom, where the rucksack and heavy duty boots are shed, the bathroom, where the shower runs for an hour, two, three- and Eggsy, who only got a silent, verging on too-tight hug from his dad upon racing to meet him at the door, decides to leave well alone and go play on his own.

It’s well past dinner time –a couple of quickly put together sandwiches that Michelle makes sure he’s tucking in with gusto before she leaves to go stand guard in front of the closed bathroom door again- when his father emerges from the shower and makes his way to the living room, the man still trailing behind him.

Lee makes a bee line for the sofa, absently carding his fingers for a moment through Eggsy’s short tresses as he passes him on his way there. It’s with an eerie sort of synchronicity that both his dad and the man sink down at the same time: the former on the soft cushions of the sofa and the latter heavily on the floor, his dad staring vacantly into space and the stranger staring at him.

Michelle goes about the room, seemingly just fussing and tidying up a bit, but her eyes don’t leave her husband for a moment. By the end of the hour Lee has a blanket around his shoulders, a mug of –untouched- tea in his hands and a gentle kiss dropped on his temple for every time she has brushed by close enough.

After a while she mutters something about fetching him some left-overs from lunch before disappearing into the kitchen, leaving the two grown men to their silent staring and Eggsy sitting there, clutching a bag of marbles among his now forgotten toys.

It all happens in the span of a few seconds.

From the kitchen comes “Eggsy babe, could you come in here for a sec?”and startles him from his observation. Eggsy, his chubby fingers still clumsy, drops the net; a kaleidoscope of marbles clatters to the floor, bouncing and scattering in every direction.

The two human-shaped statues in the living room seem to come alive at the same time. The stranger snaps his eyes away from Lee to stare at Eggsy, eyes wide with surprise, as if noticing the child for the first time. A shuddering exhale escapes through Lee’s lips, who seems to collapse inward as soon as the man’s eyes leave him, crumbling face hastily hidden in his hands. The forgotten mug is dropped in the process, its fragments and contents joining the mess of toys on the floor.

And throughout it all there stands Eggsy frozen in place, watching with mounting trepidation as one of the marbles makes its way slowly but steadily towards the man, and something is wrong, so very, very wrong.

He waits; waits for the small collision that will surely get a reaction out of the man, waits for the tipping point in the ever-growing tension that he can barely understand, waits for the other shoe to drop. He waits, for lack of better words and with the certainty that only a gut-feeling can lend to a child, for the beginning of the end.

Eggsy’s lungs stop working. The marble reaches the man’s leg… and phases out of existence.

Only not quite.

Mere seconds after this impromptu disappearing act it reappears on the other side of the stranger’s leg, as if going through solid matter is something marbles are supposed to do.

The sheer surreality of it all is enough to snap Eggsy out of his panic for a moment. His eyes flyup to the man’s face, only to find his piercing glare has shifted into a confused frown and is now fixed upon his own leg. His gaze slowly lifts, now back on Lee, and it’s like a light has been shone on a dark room- his brows slowly unfurrow and he takes a slow, deep breath. Something akin to understanding floods his expression and he looks around the room as if taking it in for the first time before his eyes land on Eggsy once again.

 

 

All tension drains from his shoulders as his expression turns apologetic and then resolute. He rocks forward and kneels in front of Lee. In a blink he has raised an arm towards his father’s bowed head and grazed his temple with careful fingers.

The effect is immediate. It’s like watching an inverted mirror and Eggsy is so mesmerized that he misses the sharp intake of breath from the kitchen’s doorway.

Lee takes a deep shuddering breath and sits up just as the man’s shoulders sag with the force of the air leaving him. On the sofa Lee is scrubbing at his face with he palms of his hands; on the floor the man sits back down heavily and closes his eyes. And then, without a single sound, he starts to fade away: slowly, as if he was being brushed away from existence, until there’s nothing that could point to him ever being there. Just like any pencil drawing Eggsy ever took a rubber to: gone, just gone, and with him the last tendrils of cold from within his chest.

Which leaves Eggsy, confused and raw and so very tired, with nothing to keep him on his toes anymore. Tears spring up unannounced, but it’s not before Michelle has dashed across the living room and scooped him up in her arms that the wailing starts.

“Oh babe” she is cooing “Eggsy babe I’m so sorry… It’s okay now, love, it’s okay, it’s okay” she murmurs into his hair, in between kisses to his wet and splotchy cheeks, inside the tight cocoon that she’s made for him in her arms.

The sofa creaks and soon another pair of arms joins them, a strong chest now shielding Eggsy from the world at his back. His father’s warm voice joins his mother’s quiet assurances until the wailing dies down and is replaced by quiet hiccups.

Eggsy clings to them until he falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

Things are okay for a while. Then a man with a serious face and a pin-striped suit shows up at their doorstep, an uncharacteristically silent Lee at his back. Michelle takes one look at her husband and breaks down in tears.

The man in the suit walks away into the night with Lee at his heels. He leaves behind a medal and hole in their lives. It’s the last time Eggsy sees his father.

 

* * *

 

Seven years down the road, Michelle gets a call from school.

Two hours later find her and a still shaken Eggsy bundled up inside a pillow fort. He hasn’t uttered a word since she came to collect him from the infirmary, where the school nurse hadn’t been able to do much besides grapping a scratchy blanket around him and unsuccessfully trying to get him to eat some bland cereal bars. The poor woman had been at a loss as to why the child had suddenly gone nearly catatonic and now she wouldn’t stop blabbering about the awful chemicals in candy bars these days. Michelle had taken one look at her son and known at once what had happened.

She doesn’t prod. Instead they lie side by side under a dome made out of a bed sheet hung between two chairs, her hand carding slowly through his hair as he burrows on her lap. She tells herself that she’s giving him time to come back enough to her so that he will pay attention to the conversation to come, but knows that she needs the silence just as much as him. She’s been stalling- out of prudence as much as cowardice, perhaps a flicker of hope that it wouldn’t be necessary after all, but she can’t lie to herself anymore. She can’t keep denying his son an explanation.

She steels herself, takes a bracing breath and starts to speak about Them.

 

* * *

 

(Sophie is a scrawny girl with peanut-colored hair and knobby knees playing alone in the school’s sandbox. Eggsy has never seen her before in class or in the hallways, but he takes one look at her yellow sundress and decides that he likes her right then and there.

They play together during recess for three days, filling the free time with chatter and easy laughter. On the fourth day, after Sophie has talked Eggsy through building an impressive mud castle, he gets bored and tries to tackle her down to the damp soil- keyword being “try”, because he goes right through her and falls face-first into the sand.

There are no words for what it feels like, touching a ghost. It’s as if something has cracked and hollowed inside his ribcage, left his heart open and ripe for the taking. For a second that’s all there is to it, a sense of vulnerability and fresh emptiness that knocks the breath out of him and leaves him gasping. It is new and it is awful, and so overwhelming that Eggsy has barely caught his breath before it gets _worse_.

Something cold and slimy slowly slips between his ribs and curls up right under his breastbone. He’s tempted for a moment to let the panic take over completely before his head snaps up and his eyes meet Sophie’s own terrified ones- he finds a fear there that echoes his own, and strangely enough that’s what helps him reign it all in and take a deep breath.

Eggsy is no stranger to ghosts- crap telly and awful Hollywood movies have taken care of that for him. What they haven’t done for him is teach him how to proceed: does he tell her to go into the light? Does she need something done, a message sent? Is she an evil spirit? Is an exorcise in his immediate future?

His friend in distress is what’s in his immediate future, he scolds himself. Sophie is a nice girl and she doesn’t deserve to feel like this just because Eggsy had to go and break the spell, right? He recalls with a sudden clarity a strange man sitting on the floor, staring intently at a marble disappearing through his leg. Eggsy has no idea where that picture’s come from, but he remembers a familiar fear and confusion in the man’s eyes. He sits upright and clears his throat.

“Sophie,” he tells her, in the most serious tone he can muster, and then comes up short on what to say, so he just blurts out the first thing that comes to mind “you’re dead. Like, dead-dead, didyouknow?”

As far as fuck ups go it’s a monumental one and his jaw snaps shut just as the last of it has left his lips. Way to bring it up sensibly he thinks as his face heats up. Cringing at his own words, Eggsy is fully expecting Sophie to work up a mighty tantrum when her laughter distracts him from further contemplating the ruination of their friendship.

“Yeah” she says through her giggling “of course I know, dummy! I kinda forgot though?”

She sticks her tongue out at him and Eggsy stutters out a nervous laugh, but his heart’s not in it and she notices it too. Their laughter dies quickly as her face turns somber.

“Guess I should go now” she mutters as she gets up and brushes imaginary sand from her sundress –and really, Eggsy should have noticed how she always wore the same yellow dress, how it never got wrinkled or dirty from playing in the sandbox. She turns around with a forlorn wave. “Ta, Eggsy”

“Soph, wait!” He’s scrambling to his feet and reaching out to stop her before he’s even thought about it, and he should know better than to try and touch her by now, so it’s twice as frustrating when his hand goes through her back and the freezing thing settles back inside his chest with a vengeance.

By the time he’s stopped clutching his chest and looks up, Sophie is nowhere to be seen. It’s still ten minutes until a teacher finds him curled up in the sandbox and brings him to the Infirmary, from where Michelle will fetch him later on.

He never sees Sophie again, and he never tells his mom about her.)

 

* * *

 

Here is a list of things that Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (aged 12 and a half) now knows about ghosts:

-  They are real.

-   His grandmother could see them, back when she was alive.

-   His mother can see them as well.

-   He, as luck would have it, can too (which is not half as cool as TV shows make it up to be)

-   He is not going mad. This is something his mom has impressed upon him vehemently- They are not inside his head, she tells him, and won’t show up through scans, tests or evaluations of any kind. They just are, and no amount of pills will make them go away.

-   Trying to touch them never ends well (he has learnt the hard way).

-   Most of them vanish once they’ve been touched or have touched someone, which is just as well considering what a sucky experience that is.

-   The more you pay attention to them, the more they will notice you (don’t look don’t talk don’t don’t _don’t_ )

-   There are different types of ghosts. Some will talk to you, some won’t, some don’t even realize you are there and some others seem fixated on a particular person- they are, in short, like any other person you can stumble upon in London, except for the lack of physical body thing. It’s a wonder he’s gone this long without accidentally touching one.

-   Not everyone comes back (his grandma didn’t, his dad did)

-   (He can still hear his mom sobbing sometimes, when it’s late at night and she thinks he’s asleep.)

-   (Eggsy wishes his dad had never come back)

 

* * *

 

Some ghosts, he has learnt over the years, take to death as fish take to water.

Take Mrs. Durham three doors down for example: he sees her yammering at her sour-faced son just as her body is being wheeled out of her flat, as if she had never dropped dead in the first place. The woman, all nervy limbs and ceaseless chit-chat about her cats in life, spares a single disdainful look at her late body and goes right back to lecturing her son about which animal likes what brand of cat food best. Not that he notices, the poor man- Eggsy doubts any amount of expensive dry cleaning will take away the scars on his suit from trying to wrangle two near-rabid cats.

It’s not the first time Eggsy has heard one of Them talk nor does he have a particular wish to learn about the pros and cons of canned cat food versus the dry kind, so he’s soon turning on his heels with a mind to grab his trainers and go for a run. He hears the desperate call the poor old sap is putting through to animal control, having given up on herding the cats, and Mrs. Durham’s protests growing both in volume and in tone.

“Ma’am I tell you- no, i have no idea how many cats my mother had i just- there is no way I can bring them over, no- sorry but I- look can’t you just send someone over to pick them up? Isn’t that what you people at Animal Control do?

“Oh, I ought to have turned _you_ in to Animal Control back when I could, you ungrateful beast!”

Eggsy is distracted enough that he doesn’t think to contain a short peel of laughter. It doesn’t take him long to regret that slip, especially when his regret materializes in front of him between one blink and the next in the shape of a fuming Mrs. Durham.

“You” she starts, watery eyes narrowing and wobbly chin raised defiantly “You can see me.”

The sudden adrenaline rush is enough that he manages to stop dead on his tracks before going through her. Avoiding her eyes he makes to go on as if he hadn’t noticed her, stepping to the side and leaving a wide berth between them. It’s a poor attempt at pretending he’s seen nothing and it falls apart on its own- no one would walk around seemingly thin air for no apparent reason and they both know it. Mrs. Durham huffs impatiently at his back.

“Come now boy, cut the chase and do some good for once in your god forsaken life. Help me out with my oaf of a son and I’ll leave you be.”

Now would be the moment where Eggsy, with all the brawl and revulsion at being bossed around that comes with being sixteen and angry –insecure, scared- , would not have it. He’d throw a rude gesture over his shoulder and be on his merry way, and he’s fully intending to do just that when he finds that he can’t.

For all that he’d never liked Mrs. Durham in life –with her smelly overcoats and penchant for looking down on him- he remembers all the casseroles covered in film that showed up on their doorstep for weeks after Lee’s death. Remembers coming home from school to her and his mother having tea in silence, his mom’s eyes red and puffy and Mrs. Durham pretending not to notice. Remembers all the long evenings he’d spent at her house as a child while Michelle pulled shift after shift to keep them afloat.

He remembers a kindness that had never asked to be repaid. His shoulders sag.

For the following half hour Eggsy turns out to be an expert on the late Mrs. Durham’s cats. Her son is beyond grateful for this godsent neighbor and even scratches his wallet a bit, leaving him with 10 extra pounds in his pocket.

When it’s all said and done, Mrs. Dunham huffs a curt “Thank you” and promptly disappears.

 

* * *

 

Some things he picks up on his own.

For example: he now knows that they are drawn to strong emotions, especially the bad kind- happiness and excitement will get him a couple of sideways glances and no more if he’s careful. Sadness, anger and guilt- now that’s another story altogether, he soon learns.

He goes through this particular crash course with Dean’s ghosts.

It puzzles him at first, how someone like Dean seems to attract ghosts just by going out the door. Most of them are the fuzzy type, the kind that wander aimlessly around him looking either lost or confused- these are the most innocuous type, the ones that are more echo than sound. Eggsy’s quite sure they don’t even know they are dead. They are like shadows and leave as soon as Dean does, so Eggsy ends up ignoring them most of the time.

The man is nothing but blandly pleasant, slightly rough around the edges where a difficult childhood and a youth of petty crime have taken their toll. He is reformed these days, a man who does honest work whenever he manages to find it. Dean likes to smoke and goes for a pint with his friends over at the Black Prince whenever he’s had a rough day. He is, in short, dull and uninteresting to Eggsy, but he’s nice to him and his mom and, what’s more, he makes her laugh.

It takes them over two years to tie the knot, and Dean doesn’t move in before all the papers have been signed and stamped. Eggsy likes to think it’s out of deference to his mom, giving her the time and space to finally let Lee go. For once he let’s himself hope for a brighter future.

No sooner has Michelle’s pregnancy test come up with a positive, the wolf in their house drops his sheep skin. With it goes all pretense of pleasantness that isn’t followed by a demand or a threat, and dread takes permanent residence inside Eggsy’s chest. Anger never seems to be far from Dean’s voice, and suddenly all of the ghosts –now a permanent fixture in their home, how had he been so blind, _how had he not seen before_ \- make sense.

Dean’s “friends” from the Black Prince become regulars at their place and soon they learn that they are in fact his colleagues, his partners in whatever sort of crime he graduated in during his youth.

Michelle – because even if Eggsy would rather die than voice this thought, that mom sometimes isn’t mom but just Michelle, drawn and miserable and so far from his reach- becomes more and more tangled in Dean’s web with every passing day. She makes up excuses for him when she can and falls into a defeated silence when she can’t, only to rise the next day pretending nothing happened. Both her and Eggsy know better, but he really can’t blame her for trying when he feels as lost as her under Dean’s tyrany. He has become the ruler of their lives to the point that any attempt at escaping would bring it all down crashing on their heads. With Eggsy just out of school and a baby on the way it just isn’t an option.

The night Daisy is born Eggsy is on his third “errand” for Dean. He rushes to the hospital as soon as the money changes hands, the small weight of the plastic zip-lock he’d carried over his breast lingering behind like an after-image. “Getcha a lil' cash, yeah?” had said Dean the first time he’d taken him apart to ‘talk business’- before Eggsy had a chance to make up an excuse something dangerous had glinted in his eyes and he’d leant in “Pay up some rent, mam’s and lil sis’ too, now that’d be nice”. It had quickly become clear that he wasn’t asking, and it took no genius to know that was the nicest wording he could expect from Dean so Eggsy shuts his mouth and braves through every “little favour”.

A hand hauls him inside the room as soon as he reaches the door, fisting over his breastbone and pressing there.

“Where’s my cash at, Muggsy?” Dean slurrs through a sleazy smirk, stale breath stealing over Eggsy’s face. He grits his teeth and shoves the wad of money in his face, eyes never leaving his mother’s form on the bed; Michelle is sleeping and relief washes over him. It’s stupid to feel like this with her already knowing about the errands he runs for his stepfather, but he wishes to spare her as much as he can. He knows she blames herself, and in turn he blames himself for taking Dean’s silence on this matter for granted. It had all blown up in his face during one of the usual heated arguments and the despairing look in his mother’s face is a wound that has yet to scab over.

“There’s a good boy” Dean shakes him once for good measure and lets him go with a snort, content for now to sit back down and count the bills. Eggsy goes straight to the small cradle by the bed and peers down at his baby sister.

“Hullo Daisy” he whispers reverently, careful not to rouse her. He can’t help himself when he reaches out with one careful finger, brushing the incredibly soft skin with the back of it. Eggsy could swear she’s the tiniest, most frail thing he’s ever seen, and yet his baby sister has already kicked down the doors to his heart and claimed it for her own. He vows then and there, not in voice but in thought, to never let any harm come to her. Eggsy will do everything in his hands to make her future a brighter one than his own, Dean and his ever present entourage of ghosts and goons be damned.

His finger comes to rest on a tightly closed fist and Eggsy can’t help but marvel at how small it is. When it unfurls and graps around his finger he loses the battle against the tears welling up in his eyes.

It feels like atonement.

 

* * *

 

He tried to escape Dean once, back when it hadn’t been so bad and Daisy hadn’t been more than two blurry bars in a pregnancy test. He enrolled in the Royal Marines, desperate to find a way out for him and his small family, and for a bit it looked like he was going to make it. He was top of his class and worked harder than any other recruit with the kind of single-minded focus that only desperation can lend.

Eggsy came home from a training break to a house full of ghosts and a mother that broke down in sobs as soon as he crossed the threshold.

He never went back to boot camp.

 

* * *

 

It only takes a pint and a bar fight straight out from an action movie for Eggsy to fall head over heels for Harry Hart. He really can’t blame either the drink or the adrenaline for it though, he’s got eyes and a healthy libido after all- the man is all long legs and a trim waist that only helps showcase his strong shoulders, the whole package coming bundled in a bespoke suit that’s pushing all the right buttons for Eggsy. Not that he’s into posh guys really, but there’s something to be said about confident men in suits and well, if he’s got a bit of a thing for silver foxes, that’s his own damn business and no one else’s.

The nonchalant display of elegant violence just seals the deal.

It’s a blow to his self-esteem, but Harry ends up saving his sorry ass three times that day- first by bailing him out, then at the bar and finally with his disembodied voice when Dean had threatened to gut him right then and there. Eggsy tries not to let all the damsel-in-distress scenarios get to him- the man is a walking _deus ex machina_ after all, come out of nowhere and completely out of his place in his life. It’s not like he could have done anything to hide all the fucked up shit going on in his life from him anyways, so in a way it’s better he got to see the worse of it all at once, he thinks.

Eggsy enters the tailor shop to find Harry sitting on a couch sipping a tumbler of amber liquid. He tries and fails not to think about how much this looks like the intro of a porno and instead sends a silent prayer to any divine figure willing to listen that this man may have a thing for mouthy twinks with a shit ton of issues on their backs. It’s not like he’s looking for anything beyond a good shag – Harry’s type would never go for anything beyond that with someone like Eggsy-, so he’s more than willing to overlook any weird-ass kinks this so-called tailor may have for a chance to get into those sinfully fitted pants.

It’s soon glaringly obvious that Harry Hart is no tailor, and it doesn’t look like he’s all that interested in keeping up the charade.

“Interested?” he asks casually not that long afterwards, as if he wasn’t offering Eggsy a spy make-over like the strangest –and admittedly most attractive- fairy godmother in the world. His breath tickles the nape of Eggsy’s neck, causing a shiver to run down his spine. They don’t break eye contact in the mirror.

He tries not to dwell on just how much he’d agree to, if Harry were to ask.

 

* * *

 

The dormitory is on its way to becoming an aquarium and all the posh kids are doing is yell out random parts of bathroom appliances.

“Loo snorkels!” bellows Charlie “The loo snorkels!”

Which, okay, as far as panicky nonsense goes it’s pretty hilarious. Eggsy almost laughs at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, but then Roxy – one of the two half-decent girls, the small one with the look that promises swift and painful retribution if you cross her- joins him.

“Showerheads!” is her brilliant contribution.

If this is some sort of upper-class in-joke for grim situations Eggsy really doesn’t need in- what he really wants to know is why everyone is now swimming in the opposite direction of the only exit this damned fish-tank-in-the-making has. He doesn’t have much time to linger on that though- he’s underwater in record time and the mouthful of air he took won’t help him for much longer. He makes what any sane person would do in this situation: he swims towards the door and hopes for the best. He barely notices the tall recruit from earlier- Aurelia? Amelia?- floating by her cot, doing god knows what- he’s got a goal and no time to spare.

He makes it to the door just as his lungs begin to make their discomfort known and wastes no time in taking hold of the handle, bracing his feet against the wall beside it and pulling with all that he has.

The door doesn’t give.

Eggsy despairs.

A deep voice giggles at his right.

It takes all of his self-control and no small amount of past surprise encounters with ghosts in rather unfortunate situations to keep what precious little air he still has from leaving his lungs. As it is, he swings around as quickly as he can and comes face to face with the bland smile of a man leaning nonchalantly against the wall.

If the clear laughter underwater hadn’t had clued Eggsy in on him being a ghost, the rest of the man’s appearance would have: the stranger’s clothes look as dry and perfectly ironed as if they’d just come out from the dry cleaner’s; he’s reclined against the wall with his feet firmly on the floor, as if the fact that he’s completely submerged had simply not crossed his mind. Eggsy doubts the guy has even attempted to look normal.

 

 

“Can’t say I blame you for trying the door,” the man muses aloud, eyes drifting to the other end of the room “most logical course of action if you don’t know about the U-bend trick.” his eyes snap back to Eggsy, suddenly calculating “However, that’s of little use to you right now, and seeing as you are not the mole it is safe to assume you will soon drown.”

Eggsy is still trying to process this tirade –U-bend? Mole?- when the ghost starts to move. The man scowls as he pushes himself away from the wall and Eggsy helplessly looks on as he simply strolls down between the cots, feet still firmly attached to the ground. “But that won’t do. I was hoping you’d last a bit longer, maybe see if good ol’ Chester pops an ulcer or two from having a ‘pleb’ “ at that he turns around an flings his arms wide, making exaggerated quote marks with his hands and rolling his eyes as he walks backwards “make it through one or two of the big tests” He’s grinning now, walking quickly around the candidates hunched over the toilets –and breathing through the showerheads’ tubes, he notices- , apparently having lost all interest in Eggsy.

He has no illusions- none of them care for him one bit and the chances they’d willingly share their personal pocket of air with him are slim at best, but he’s got literally nothing to lose at this point. He’d rather try and be proven wrong than slowly drown to death by the door, so he kicks himself away from it and swims across the room to them, trying his best to ignore the increasing burning sensation from his lungs. Maybe Roxy will let him take a breath or two, just enough to wait all this charade out…

“Now, I know teamwork is key and all that, but why delay the inevitable?” At that Eggsy’s head snaps up to find the ghost now sitting with his legs crossed on the sink countertops, looking on with an amused glint in his eyes. “You need to think out of the box with this one.” His mouth quirks up before he leans forward a bit, his voice dropping to a conspirational whisper “Getting into Wonderland following the rules, now where is the fun in that, Alice?” With that said, he leans back against the mirror with a satisfied smile, as if having just shared one of the Universe’s biggest secrets with Eggsy. Then he topples back further and phases backwards through the mirror.

Well, he’ll be damned.

Eggsy foregoes begging one of the other candidates for air and swims closer to the mirror. Once he’s close enough he taps the mirror and sure enough, there it is –or rather isn’t- the tell: no gap between his fingertip and its reflection. Figures they’d install a bloody two-way mirror in their damn bathroom, the fucking freaks. He channels all that indignation and his desperation into battering the mirror with a fist, vision starting to swim with dark spots as his lungs burn. Thankfully the damn thing doesn’t seem to be reinforced in any way and soon they are all cascading out of the impromptu fish tank, coughing and gasping for air on the floor of the adjoining room.

“Congratulations on completing your first task” says Merlin by greeting. The man is standing by the side with a clipboard in hand, looking unruffled by the half-drowned kids sprawled on the floor in front of him. The ghost is standing by his side beaming at them.

“Awww wet Lancelot ducklings” the cheeky bastard says. Eggsy would strangle him if he could, but he snorts all the same- the rush of adrenaline still hasn’t subsided and he’s just cheated death by drowning, cut him some slack- “Look at them, Merlin, they are so tiny!” he says to the man at his side. When he turns towards them once more his face softens, a touch of nostalgia in the quirk of his mouth turning his smile into a sad one “Look at them.” He repeats, lower this time.

“… Eggsy- good job on spotting the double-sided mirror…” goes on Merlin, and the ghost steps away from him to crouch in front of Eggsy.

“And that” he points with his thumb at the tech wizard at his back “is what you get when you follow the white rabbit, Alice. I’m James, by the way- codename Lancelot, although not for long, it would seem.”

With that said, the late Lancelot drops a wink and blinks out of existence.

 

* * *

 

Eggsy sees more of James during his training. The late agent seems to get a kick out of watching them make fools of themselves during their tests. There’s no malice in him though: even if there’s always a gleam of mischief in his eyes he seems to be a decent guy, and his taunts are always light-hearted. He’s as likely to appear close-by unannounced to scare the living shit out of him with some well-intentioned words of advice –“Really now Eggsy, here I am, just trying to help, and this is the thanks I get…”- as he is to sit back and watch the candidates work themselves to exhaustion during training while dropping snarky commentary where he sees fit.

It’s clear as day that he holds no love for most of the candidates –“That knife flew almost a whole meter over the mark, Rufus! Why not aim for two meters next time? Follow your dreams, my lad!”-, who are more often than not on the end of his most scathing remarks.

In a similar fashion, he makes no attempt to hide that he’s taken a liking to both Eggsy – “My bad, Alice, you are stuck with the nickname until you go and read _Through the looking glass_. I can’t believe you blindly followed a complete stranger like that, the name suits you like a glove, boy, but you’ll be following into my steps way too soon if you keep that nasty habit”- and Roxy –“Charlie, fuck off!” “Ooooh I like this one! Hope she ends up breaking that big nose of his”-.

Roxy, Eggsy has found, is sharp as a whip and has the unholy ability to look both gorgeous and terrifying at once. It’s soon obvious that there’s no lost love between her and the other candidates and he’d bet his winged sneakers it was her who swapped their expensive mouthwash with their equally expensive aftershave. She catches his eye when one by one the posh kids begin sputtering and spitting in the sinks one morning, and the faux-concern in her face is so hilariously fake that he has trouble covering his laughter with an spontaneous coughing fit. It’s not long before they become tight, their alliance solid and indissoluble, and the other candidates soon learn to steer clear of them.

It would be a lie to say Eggsy doesn’t like James- the guy is witty and smart as hell, and it really doesn’t hurt to have someone to cheer him on during the selection. For all that Harry was the one to propose him, he gets to see so little of the man he might as well have been picked by a random computer algorithm. It would also be a lie to say he isn’t a bit hurt by the radio silence, no matter how many times James rolls his eyes at him and talks about how busy an agent’s life is (Eggsy will deny it until the end of his days, but these long-suffering tirades of James are reserved for when he’s caught looking longingly at the road leading to HQ or the manor when they are training outside- he’s not about to admit to having a little crush on Harry to said man’s dead former colleague) .

What he does instead of moping –which he doesn’t, thank you very much- is focus on his training, and if his day brightens considerably whenever he manages to catch Harry around the halls then well, it’s no one’s business, really.

 

* * *

 

“So” Eggsy begins one day, and then hesitates. There’s really no tactful way to bring this up, but Lancelot doesn’t seem like the type of guy to be hung up on delicate sensibilities anyways, so he gives up on careful wording and just blurts “how’d you die?”

James looks at him contemplatively for a second. A second too long, if his past interactions with the man have taught Eggsy anything.

James tilts his head, grins and promptly falls apart- quite literally at that.

“Whoops?” the late Lancelot - _in two he’s cut down in two good god_ \- says from the floor.

Being cut in half apparently does not impede your speech -or even factor in for that matter- when you are a ghost. As far as desensitization training goes, it’s pretty much the most effective he’s ever going to get.

 

* * *

 

“Want to watch?”

Harry’s voice barely makes it through the rush of adrenaline and the lingering haze from being roofied, but when it registers all the tension exits Eggsy’s body at once and leaves him boneless against the train tracks. He’s not going to die a gruesome death tied to some slimy rails. It was all another freaky test. It takes him a moment to collect his thoughts beyond that and get his breathing under control again, but as he nods and goes to answer the man the words get stuck on their way out at what he sees on his face.

The hunger there is plain for all to see, something almost predatorial lurking just beneath the blatant appreciation and heat. Eggsy is under no illusions that the man could hide it if he cared enough to, which only adds to the shock of finding that particular look directed at him. The moment stretches on as he becomes uncomfortably aware of the tableau he must be presenting, all tied up and spread on the rails, speechless and panting- the vivid picture of vulnerability, all laid out for Harry’s eyes. He feels pinned down by the intensity of Harry’s gaze, but the feeling of being exposed like this to his mentor is not exactly unpleasant, as certain parts of his anatomy are quickly letting him know.

Talk about terrible timing.

“Do you require assistance with your restraints?” Harry asks in a casual tone that barely hides his amusement when Eggsy starts to squirm and pull at the knots holding him down.

It’s a bullshit question. Eggsy would be more than capable of escaping the bonds with a bit of time, especially with a blunt blade, and he’d bet his life Harry carries at least half a dozen of the sharpest knives in that overcoat of his. He knows this, Harry knows this.

Right, then.

Eggsy stops moving and just stares back at Harry. Two can play this game and he’ll be damned if Harry’s the only one to get a kick out of their whatever-this-is relationship, so he lays back and stretches lazily, making sure his body turns into a whipcord line of lean muscle all on display. He’s being a show-off, but by the look of it Harry doesn’t seem to mind at all- quite the contrary, if his rapt attention is anything to go by. Eggsy allows himself a coy smirk as he wonders just how much Harry’s thick overcoat can hide.

He lets the silence stretch between them, feels the mounting anticipation thicken the air between them as their eyes don’t part. It’s a feeling similar to a free-fall that has yet to turn into exhilarated flight, something so full of promise just waiting to tip to the right edge of the razor.

It’s Harry who breaks the moment after one last look and a private smile by kneeling by his feet and focusing on untying the ropes. Eggsy lets go of the breath he hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding and tries to breath normally and definitely not think about Harry Hart being close enough to smell. He’s doing a valiant effort and it looks like it’s paying off when Harry’s hand cups delicately around his ankle. His eyes snap up to find Harry looking intently at him as he starts to slowly massage the sore skin left behind by the ropes.

So much for keeping his semi in check.

By the time the same treatment has been given to each limb Eggsy has totally given up all pretense of being calm and composed and is staring at the vaulted ceiling of the tunnel in the purest form of mortification he’s ever known. He doesn’t look Harry in the eye when the man offers him a hand up. They stand still for a moment too long once he’s been pulled up, Eggsy’s hand still engulfed in Harry’s. Slowly, as if worried Eggsy will get startled and run – _as if_ -, Harry’s calloused thumb starts tracing the outline of Eggsy’s knuckles. Slowly, so slowly, his long fingers find their way to the palm of his hand, where the edge of a nail traces the slight lines of the skin. Eggsy finally raises his eyes to look at Harry, who seems lost in thought as he traces Eggsy’s life line one last time.

As Harry finally lets go without a word and turns around to briskly walk down the tunnel Eggsy can’t help but wonder if this all isn’t just a different kind of test after all.

 

* * *

 

Slow clapping starts right at Eggsy’s back when he enters the control room. He doesn’t turn around.

“Congratulations on not peeing yourself! You’d have never lived it down, I know poor old Gawain di-“ James stops talking just as suddenly as he started, and the sheer novelty of the ghost chatterbox just shutting up in the middle of a sentence gets him turning around slightly, as if checking to see if the door he just came through had closed or not.

James is frozen in the doorstep of the room, staring over Eggsy’s shoulder with a blank expression. It’s a shock to say the least, seeing as the late agent is the human equivalent of an emoji repertoire. He’s half tempted to stay back with some made-up excuse just to ask him what’s up, but Harry’s back keeps retreating into the room where Roxy and Merlin are already waiting, and he knows serious when he sees it. He makes a mental note to ask James about it later and takes his place next to Roxy, who’s standing in front of a stony-faced man with some serious bags under his eyes.

They watch in silence as Charlie –Arthur’s candidate, no less- spectacularly fails the test and then throws a childish tantrum on the rails. Eggsy is fully expecting James to explode into loud laughter, so it’s more than a little alarming when no sound comes from the back of the room. Scratching his nape and stretching a bit, Eggsy turns just enough to find James right next to the man he now knows to be Percival, Roxy’s mentor.

“He looks tired” The ghost is watching the man with the saddest face he’s ever seen him wear, hand raised towards his face. “Sad is not a good look on you, dear heart”

As his fingers make contact with Percival’s cheek a violent shiver makes its way down the agent’s spine, setting it straighter if possible. James’ hands beats a hasty retreat and he holds it against his chest, as if scared he’d reach out again if he left it unrestrained. His face falls and he stumbles back.

“Guess this is it, after all” He says as he contemplates his own hand. With a deep sigh and a last look towards Percival he walks towards the front of the room until he’s standing beside Merlin.

“Eggsy” He begins, and then he stops to give him a genuine smile, if still a sad one “I can say in all honesty that it’s been a pleasure to see you and Roxanne here grow and thrive throughout your training. I have no doubt you two will make some of the finest agents this agency has ever seen, no matter who lands my title in the end.” James stops his monologue for a moment to look at them both with pride and his smile grows a touch fonder just as Eggsy’s eyes widen in realization of what’s happening “As it is, I really don’t think I can be of much use to you beyond this point, and I really believe I may have overstayed my welcome” he says as his eyes flicker briefly towards Percival. His smile fades and he looks back at Eggsy, who’s now pleading with his eyes “I know it’s a, well, a dick move to be candid with you, to bid my goodbyes when you can’t speak your piece, but I believe it’s better if we keep this short and spare us the long sentimentalities, yeah? Yeah”

He sighs, and his shoulders drop. “You are not only a good agent, but a kind-hearted lad.” he continues in a lower voice “I am glad I got to know you, Eggsy, no matter how terrible your taste in men is” he adds with a significant look towards Harry and a saucy wink and do nothing to distract Eggsy from realizing the ghost is already fading, the outlines of his suit blurry and translucent “You take care of him when you two finally bump, alright? Take care of them all” his voice has turned into a barely-there whisper now, his form hard to make out from its backdrop.

James raises a nearly-transparent arm in a slow wave “Have a good life, Eggsy. Ta!”

And just like that his friend is gone.

Eggsy gets a professional congratulatory speech from Merlin, a reminder of his father’s long shadow and a useless push towards seeing Roxy as the competition- and is sent to walk it all off at Harry’s house for the next 24 hours.

 

* * *

 

It starts with the little things.

A hand at his elbow, guiding him in the first time he’s invited inside Harry’s house; small touches whenever Harry passes him by, the way Harry’s smile seems freer, softer when it’s directed at him. All of this could be passed off as simple fondness, the kind of affection that is expected between a mentor and a mentee. Other things though… Not so much.

Harry, he’s quickly learning, is a right smug bastard who plays downright dirty. That much he knows now, caged against the kitchen’s countertop with Harry’s arms bracketing him.

The thing here is that this situation is not new. Harry’s used literally every situation where he could crowd Eggsy against something or other and done just that- just to up and leave like it’s nothing when Eggsy’s blood-pressure has skyrocketed. It’s pretty obvious how much the man enjoys riling him up if the his smug smile is anything to go by. Yet as much as Eggsy enjoys teasing on a good day, being a giant ball of pent-up sexual frustration is not conductive to paying attention to all the little things Harry’s trying to teach him. Which leaves Eggsy with two possible courses of action: diffuse or counter-attack. And, well, Eggsy’s never been one to back down, now has he?

He studies the man’s upturned face attentively. Harry’s eyes are fixed on the upper shelves of the cabinet, seemingly searching for something or other. He had approached him as Eggsy was trying to reach for the wooden tea box on the top shelf, and having turned around just in time as the man came close they were now almost chest to chest.

“What was it that you were aiming for?” Harry asks in a casual tone, as if his hips weren’t just a breath away from pressing Eggsy into the countertop, one of his hands resting on it and further caging him in.

Instead of stuttering some sort of answer and letting it go, this time Eggsy leans back against the countertop and lies “One of the bright cans at the back of the top shelf - reminded me of something mom used to buy a while ago but I can’t remember what it was” he shrugs and looks up at the man through his lashes when he blinks down at him in surprise “Care to see if you can fetch it for me? It’s the bright green one”.

Both Harry and him know there’s no such can on the top shelves.

“I’m not quite sure I recall such can” Harry slowly enunciates. The man’s eyes travel back to him in the pause that follows. He looks at him searchingly, as if waiting for him to say something else, to backtrack- he’s giving Eggsy an out he doesn’t need.

He lets him know that much by propping himself up on the counter and spreading his legs invitingly “Maybe you need to take a closer look” he suggests with the most innocent look he can muster. Something flickers in Harry’s eyes as he takes the step that leaves him flush against Eggsy, his hips now bracketed by the younger man’s legs. “Perhaps so” Harry murmurs as his eyes travel down Eggsy’s body appreciatively, arms coming up to rest against the cabinet on either side of his head. He starts to lean in slowly, the air between them charged with a tension that’s been building there since the moment Harry bailed him out looking like the classiest walking wet dream Eggsy’s ever had. This is it, he thinks- the moment free falling turns into flight.

He can almost hear his blood buzzing with anticipation, breath coming shorter with every passing second and then- then Harry hangs his head down with a deep sigh. Eggsy watches dumbfounded as he takes a reluctant step back and looks up apologetically “However, I think we should be moving forward with your, ah- lessons” he clears his throat and gestures towards his study “Shall we?” he asks.

Un- _fucking_ -beliable.

Eggsy scrubs his hands down his face “Yeah, whatever” He slips off the counter and follows Harry down the corridor. It’s not like he doesn’t understand the man or his reasons- he knows what it would look like, if anyone caught wind of their liaison- he would really hate it if they got in trouble for messing around while Eggsy is still in training. And it’s not like the thought of the man using him just as a boytoy hasn’t crossed his mind once or twice, with all his teasing and riling Eggsy up, but the consideration Harry’s showing their position leaves no room for that fear to take any real hold- and no place either for fraternization until Eggsy’s secured his place in Kingsman.

Well then, if becoming the new Lancelot comes with the added bonus of getting into one Harry Hart’s bed, he will definitely not be complaining.

Surprisingly the teasing and the little touches don’t stop there. It’s almost like Harry can’t help himself when it comes to the hand that more often than not finds its way to Eggsy’s back or forearm- the complete opposite of what it’s like outside, where Harry keeps a professional distance between them. Eggsy is more than a little taken with this side of Harry, the way he shares freely the stories behind every front page stuck on the wall, how after a few stupidly complex martinis he seems to melt against the leather chair and forget to tear his eyes away from Eggsy. He doesn’t feel so bad now, playing up the teasing, throwing in some cheeky winks and biting his lips just to see Harry’s eyes lock on them, as if the man can't help himself. It’s not like they’ve got anything to hide. Their orbits are drawing tighter and tighter together- collision is just a matter of time.

After what’s probably one too many drinks Harry suggests calling it a night and heading for bed, breaking the spell for Eggsy. It’s a quiet if not direct reminder that the time he got to spend today with him is part of his training, just as the test that awaits him tomorrow. His heart feels a bit heavier when he stands up. They make their way silently to the guest room.

“Goodnight, Eggsy. Do try not to sleep in tomorrow morning” Harry says, a hint of dry humor in his tone.

“Yes, Harry” he answers the man, rolling his eyes. Something passes the man’s face at that- too quick to identify once it’s hidden underneath Harry’s calm façade, but still worth pushing. “Will that be all?” Eggsy asks playfully. He's aware that he's pushing it, a bit desperate to try and salvage some of the night’s previous mood. It’s a long shot, he knows, but still-

Aparently that’s all that it takes now for Harry’s self-discipline to come undone. No sooner has Eggsy finished asking that he finds himself being corralled against the door. One of Harry’s hands finds its way to Eggsy’s jaw, tilting it upwards slightly; its twin grabs Eggsy’s waist and pins him in place. There’s no escalation- the kiss is scorching, burning through him from the moment Harry’s lips touch his. The pure animalistic heat with which Harry kisses him leaves Eggsy’s head reeling, but as soon as he’s able shake his surprise off he’s giving as good as he gets, letting his anticipation uncoil and pour into the kiss. There’s nothing gentlemanly to the way Harry bites down on Eggsy’s lower lip or how Eggsy’s tongue twists and gets him a pleased groan from Harry. His legs are well on their way to turning into jelly and he’s fairly sure he’s sliding down the wall despite Harry’s hand gripping a bruise in the flesh of his waist. Harry lets go of the lip he’d been nibbling on with a wet, lewd noise just as Eggsy whines in his mouth.

“Yes, Eggsy” Harry murmurs against his lips, voice a good octave lower than usual “that would be all” his thumb comes up to brush Eggsy’s kiss-swollen lips “For now” With that, he retreats down the corridor and disappears behind the master bedroom’s door.It’s a good minute before Eggsy can push himself away from the wall, only to wobble to the bathroom for a quick cold shower.

Whatever tomorrow’s test consists of, he’s more than ready to face it just for the chance of getting Harry’s lips back on his as soon as possible.

 

* * *

 

Here’s what Eggsy is supposed to do: take the gun and shoot his dog.

Here’s what Eggsy does: he takes one look at Arthur, sees the smugness and barely concealed disdain in the bastard’s face and turns the gun on him instead of JB.

The shot that rings through the walls saves him from figuring out whether he’d be more able to shoot the man down in cold blood than he could with his own dog. He instantly regrets not shooting the asshole in the knee when satisfaction floods his wrinkly face.

“I knew you couldn’t do it” Eggsy hears as he hurries out the door. It stings less than he thought it would- what does sting though it’s that he was sent in for this without a warning or an explanation, that _Harry_ let him face this sick test biding him goodbye with a smile on his face and not a word on what was to come.

He takes off the edge of his anger by hot-wiring one of Kingsman’s cabs and making for The Black Prince. It’s time he set some things straight now that he’s officially out of the race for the Lancelot position, and he’s fully intending to blow-off some steam with Dean’s goons and the man himself when the cab suddenly takes a life of its own. Eggsy beats on the wheel, the doors, pushes all the buttons on display to no avail- it’s useless. Defeated, he slumps back against the seat and waits for the damn car to take it where it pleases.

He’s fully expecting that to be the shop or even the manor- what he’s not expecting is for it to take him back to Harry’s house. For a moment Eggsy panics about facing the man so soon after his failure, but the fear soon turns into an even more incandescent anger when he spots the disappointment in the man’s face. Harry sent him out to kill his own damn dog. If he thinks he’ll cower and grovel for forgiveness of any kind for not pulling the trigger on a completely innocent soul he’s in for a big nasty surprise.

He lets the man hear it- all of it. His anger, his hurt, his insecurities. And Harry reciprocates showering him with disappointment and distress, and it hurts more than it should, which goes to show Eggsy just how deep in he is with this insufferable man. And all of this for what he finds was a fucking blank.

Eggsy can’t help but laugh later on about the irony of it, of how it all –the touches, the looks, that one kiss- is now nothing but a blank in the face of his failed test. Whatever they had going on stops here. Eggsy doesn’t regret not shooting JB. He does regret not trusting Harry enough to send him on his happy way to unknowingly kill his dog, and for that and all that he’s lost with it he grieves and apologizes.

“I’ll fix this when I come back” Harry says curtly as he leaves Eggsy behind amongst framed butterflies. A small, bitter part of him can’t help but wonder if he’s not another one of Harry’s small trophies, pinned in place by the promise of something more and the ever-present sense of impending doom.

Scrubbing his face he sits down heavily at Harry’s desk and settles to watch his mystery mission in Kentucky.

 

* * *

 

Kentucky, where Harry’s mind and body are taken from him.

 

Kentucky, where Harry’s hands become the orchestrators of a bloodbath.

 

Kentucky, where Harry’s life is brought to a halt by Valentine’s hand.

 

Kentucky, where everything goes wrong.

 

* * *

 

After the shot has rung through the speakers, after Harry’s feed has shown nothing but the cloudless Kentucky sky for the longest time, after Eggsy has screamed his throat raw and cried himself dry, this is what he does:

Eggsy sits in front of the laptop and waits.

He’s not waiting for the feed to change or for any sound to give him hope. Eggsy is not naïve and he knows better than most what a bullet fired point-blank at someone’s head looks like: it looks like certain, unavoidable death. So no, Eggsy is under no illusion that Harry Hart is dead, and that’s what he’s counting on, after all.

Eggsy sits in front of the laptop and waits for Harry’s ghost to show up.

He’s got to be honest with himself here: he has no idea how this works. It’s not like he’s ever waited on anyone’s ghost before, but there’s a desperation that’s steadily growing more and more urgent in his head to hold onto this last bit of hope, this tiny scrap of Harry that he can still have. He has cried and he has raged and now he will focus on what little of the man he can keep to help him carry on.

He shuts down the downward spiral of despair and grief with the ease of practice and sits tight. He figures if Harry’s to return some place, he’d go for a familiar one, to someone he knows. There’s an awful part of him that is hopeful about Harry returning for him, to him. He stifles down that train of thought as quickly as it appears.

And so Eggsy waits.

And waits.

And waits.

As the sun slowly makes its way across the walls, lengthening and shortening shadows on its way down, all his thoughts start to quieten. It’s as if with each passing minute all his pain, his sadness, his fear, are slipping inside the deep hole that’s starting to grow in the middle of his chest. They become muted, faded as it grows wider and wider, until all he’s left with is the void of it, their ringing absence.

It dawns on him as he hears the church bells chime through the audio feed that Harry is not coming back. Harry Hart, dead or alive, is not coming back for him.

Apathy and a quiet, violent sort of determination take hold of him. The sound of the shot is still looping in his head like the church bells back in Kentucky as he slams the laptop shut and makes for the front door. Harry Hart has been taken from him. It’s time he takes something from Valentine.

Eggsy slams shut the door to Harry’s house – to Harry’s life - and sets off to make some ghosts of his own.

 

* * *

 

He feels no satisfaction watching Arthur choke and die after tricking him into poisoning himself. As far as retribution goes it feels meager, inadequate- Eggsy doubts any amount of death could quell the ruthless violence coiled inside his chest, could even come close to being enough to compensate for what’s been lost.

He stays long enough to watch the realization dawn on Arthur’s sour face, long enough to see the light fade from his eyes. He doesn’t look back when he leaves the room.

 

* * *

 

Roxy shoots down a satellite and jumps from the edge of the atmosphere.

Merlin hacks into hundreds of biomechanical implants and blows up the heads of the leading forces of the world.

Eggsy infiltrates an enemy base and shoots and shoots and shoots, the sound of the rounds being fired adding to the echo left over from Harry’s feed. Valentine, though- he stabs the fucking asshole through the chest and watches life leave his eyes as closely as he watched Arthur's.

Harry Hart remains a stiffening martyr under the unforgiving Kentucky sun.

 

* * *

 

One thing Eggsy would have realized earlier if he’d had his mind in its right place is that a massacre of biblical proportions such as Valentine’s would leave behind a lot of ghosts. As it is, he doesn’t nearly understand just how many until he’s walking to the shop after checking on mom and Daisy- and finds himself trapped against the facade of a building. Central London is quite literally brimming with ghosts, some streets so saturated with the fuzzy kind that they look nebulous, almost foggy. He’s built up some tolerance to their touch over the years, but nothing that will let him walk nonchalantly down a street that’s 90% ghostly limbs and 10% traumatized Londoners- he can already feel the cold creeping in, goosebumps breaking out over his arms. There’s just no easy way out. Eggsy steels himself and breaks into a sprint, avoiding those he can and running through those he can’t as fast as his legs allow him.

He barely makes it to Savile Row, limbs feeling stiff and frozen, his chest feeling emptier by the minute. The travel through the underground tunnel is not long enough for him to shake it off, and so instead of greeting Merlin when he enters the man’s office he goes straight for the lounge. He then proceeds to basically do nothing beyond staring at thin air, too tired to answer Merlin’s prodding and too busy trying to keep his shaking to a minimum. He feels light-headed, ears filled with white noise.

When Roxy joins them she takes one look at Eggsy before plopping down next to him and loudly declaring that today’s their day off. No orders. No debriefs. Merlin takes in her upturned chin and defiant eyes and lets off a long-suffering sigh before turning around and fetching an expensive looking bottle of whiskey from a drawer.

Its contents and those of the following two bottles don’t survive the meeting.

“… but then again, how was I to know I was blowing up the bloody Queen of England’s head?” Merlin’s slurring from where he’s slumped on his desk chair, a crushed expression on his face “I had thought- no, HOPED it’d take down half the Parliament, maybe the whole of UKIP if we were lucky, but the Royal House? The Queen? Disgraceful, just disgraceful” he makes a grab for the nearest bottle and almost tips it over before Roxy beats him to it and smugly chugs down what little was left inside, much to Merlin’s chagrin. Eggsy, now lying with his head on Roxy’s lap, starts humming ‘God save the Queen’ under his breath.

“While my demise was untimely and awfull in circumstances, I fully expected Kingsman to rise up to the occasion and keep watch over the country” comes then a regal voice “I see now that I may have overestimated this organization”.

Eggsy tips his head back until an old lady in a pastel dress comes into view. The woman stares him down as Eggsy grabs the bottle from Roxy’s hand and salutes the monarch with it. “The Queen is dead” he intones gravely, dragging the vowels and slurring the words together “Long live the Queen!” The bottle slips from his hand as he rises it in a toast, smashing against the hardwood floor with a loud crash. The laugh that bubbles from his chest at her indignant huff sounds off, a delirious, hysteric edge to it. It doesn’t take long for it to turn into full-blown sobbing, Roxy petting his hair without saying a word as Merlin hangs his head and lets the silence wrap comfortably around them. Perhaps it is better they keep on talking about those lost they didn’t really care about- God knows the loved ones still haunt their every thought.

By the time the sobbing has subsided, the Queen is long gone (long live the Queen).

 

* * *

 

Eggsy wouldn’t have called himself in love with the man in life–wouldn’t have known to, wouldn’t have known better- but it would be one hell of a lie to say he isn’t – hopelessly, painfully, desperately- now. He learns about him afterwards, in what has lingered behind of Harry Hart, between the neatly pressed suits that will not be worn again and the hundreds of colorful butterflies frozen in time and hung on the wall. It may not be the real thing –not even the shadow of the real thing- but it still speaks to him of the man that once inhabited this house and breathed life into its walls. He has earned access into the life he so longed for and found it lacking without Harry to greet him there.

He visits almost religiously at first, chasing the fading echo of Harry’s voice and aftershave that seem to have impregnated the walls and halls of the house. He comes back sometimes after a particularly rough mission and settles on the plush seat behind Harry’s desk, amongst the dust and the dozens of newspaper front-pages that have no significance without the man that links them all together. Eggsy is well aware that that as far as coping methods go this is not the best in store, but it matters little when he can sit down and allow himself a few hours of waiting, of hope.

It never works, but the make-believe that Harry may come back in the wee hours of the night is exactly what he needs sometimes when he’s barely holding himself together.

He puts his foot down the day he can swear up and down that the fading smell of Harry’s cologne has grown a touch stronger. The next time he drops by the house appears dusted, the air smelling fresh. The thought of someone back at Kingsman sending a cleaning team to keep the house in good state, maybe even to re-condition it for a new inhabitant, is a bit too much for Eggsy.

He throws the keys to Harry’s house into the Thames the very next day and makes believe his heart doesn’t sink with them.

 

* * *

 

Here is something that Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (aged 24 and 3/4) never knew to expect from ghosts:

-  Sometimes their absence hurts worse than their presence.

 

* * *

 

“Rise, Galahad”

Eggsy feels the codename settle uncomfortably around his shoulders and ignores how its weight is already crushing him. He tells himself that it’s fine, that this is how it’s meant to be, him inheriting Harry’s late title, carrying on the mantle and all that jazz. Makes sure to think of the suit as simply armor and not the straightjacket it feels like, pulling tight, tight across his shoulders and chest, making keeping his breath under control an exhausting task. Makes believe that he’s not, for all intents and purposes, wearing a corpse.

Whatever lie he’s trying to tell himself doesn’t matter in the end- as soon as he’s dismissed he exits the meeting room with as much composure as he can muster and spends the next hour retching in HQ’s bathrooms.

 

* * *

 

It’s not by chance that Eggsy’s suit jacket is lined with the sharpest knives in Kingsman’s armory these days.

After the red haze from Valentine’s Day subsides London does what London does best: it dusts itself off, stops looking like a ghost town and goes on as if nothing had happened. That is not to say it’s completely recovered or truly forgotten the massacre. The scars –physical and emotional- are still fresh in its streets and people, but once the news can’t milk the tragedy further and turn their eye towards some new scandal or gruesome catastrophe or other, the dust begins to settle.

The same cannot be said for Kingsman, or Eggsy for that matter.

Once the rush from their end-of-the-world fades, the agency finds itself short on both actives and allies. Those who remain unblemished by Valentine’s touch spend most of their time traveling the world and working against the clock to try and keep as many governments and institutions as possible from collapsing.

There’s simply no time for mourning and even less for talking, which is how Eggsy finds himself locked inside of HQ’s showers scrubbing away at the matted blood on his skin.

The first time he shot a gun after the mission with Valentine he almost buckled over and got himself killed thanks to the wave of nausea that took him by surprise. The following shots that got him out of there alive were no better- Eggsy sent Merlin the all-good through the feed and took his glasses off before collapsing against the nearest wall, gasping for breath as the burning Kentucky sun somehow reached him inside the target’s parking lot in the middle of the night. It took a good hour for the sun’s glaring light to stop blinding him, for the deafening music of a church organ to let him hear anything at all. The shaking didn’t quite subside until the next day, when he dropped his gun in the armory and took a full set of throwing knives down to target practice. He still brings his gun when he’s on a mission, but he scarcely uses it- the missions rarely merit it once he’s gotten good enough with the blades.

The thing with knives and daggers though is that they are more often than not messy in the outcomes of their usage. He’s not overly-concerned with the blood if he’s to be honest with himself- it’s hard at first to accept the frightening state of utter calm that takes hold of him when he’s in the middle of a fray, the way the silence at the end of it helps quieten his thoughts. It scares him, the part of him that welcomes the violence, that takes to it with ruthlessness and a single-minded focus he’s never shown in any other aspect of his life. It takes him a while to learn to avoid the sprays of blood the different arteries in the human body will spring when severed or even nicked, and it leaves him more often than not looking like he just stepped out of a B grade horror movie- the opposite of what he needs to look like when blending in with a crowd or maintaining his cover.

No one bats an eye at blood in Kingsman. What does inevitably end up drawing more than one lingering look is the agent coming in drenched in it on the regular.

The way Merlin impeccably brings up therapy in the most casual way Eggsy’s ever witnessed makes him think he’s not the first seemingly unhinged agent they’ve dealt with. He takes in the bags under the tech master’s eyes and almost gives in. Then he remembers the literal wall of ghosts awaiting him in the streets and knows nothing he could come up with could come close to telling some therapist what it feels like, not knowing for sure whether or not he’s one of them, just another ghost haunting the city instead of the living, breathing man everyone insists he is. Not knowing which alternative is better.

(he stands in the middle of a pile of bodies of his own making, covered in their blood and surrounded by the ghosts he just brought into this world and he thinks- he thinks _\- we match now, Harry, in the end we are matched_ \- and he feels nothing.)

 

 

And so he politely declines and scurries for the showers as soon as he gets to the manor, avoids all the mirrors and closes his eyes when the water starts running red.

 

* * *

 

They think he gets better- he just becomes better at hiding, better at ignoring the shots ringing in his ears.

(no one comments on the hours upon hours he locks himself up in the shooting range with copious amounts of clips and no earmuffs- if they hear him retch or yell out in frustration, no one says a word)

 

* * *

 

It all boils down to this: Eggsy is just not good enough.

Not good enough to stand up to Dean and his goons.

Not good enough to pass the dog test.

Not good enough to make it into knighthood on his own.

Not good enough to fill in Harry’s shoes.

Not good enough for Harry’s ghost.

The timing for this little revelation could not be worse. Introspection and soul-searching have no place in the middle of a mission, much less with a full-blown shootout taking place right outside the narrow alley he’s barricaded himself in. Then again, it’s not like he can do much else, fucking shot and bleeding out all over the place.

“Hang in there, Galahad. Back-up is on its way” Merlin’s voice cuts through the crackling static that his glasses have been feeding him for the past hour since he accidentally half-crushed them.

It’s been two hours since the mission went officially FUBAR and Merlin’s voice has been getting more and more strained with every passing minute. It’s just as well, because after the first hour of being hounded through half of Amsterdam with just a Glock and two clips to spare Eggsy had started to feel a bit winded himself.

Ditching the bulletproof suit jacket in the middle of a mission would never cross his mind. It is nothing short of madness, so it comes as a nasty surprise when he somersaults over the channels’ railing only to immediately start sinking like a dead weight once he reaches the water. Turns out kevlar-cotton blends are a nightmare to stay afloat in, never mind swim- it is, quite literally, a sink or swim situation. With God knows how many men breathing down his neck, Eggsy leaves the suit to sink and swims back to the surface.

This is of course the moment his pursuers decide to throw all caution to the wind and let loose a hailstorm of bullets on the channel. All pretense of discretion is quickly lost as the centre of Amsterdam erupts into chaos.

“ETA five minutes” says the tech wizard in his ears “Stay alert, Galahad”

Eggsy is under no illusion that this is as much Merlin’s order as an unspoken warning. Stay alert, reinforcements may need help. Be on your guard, the mission is far from being over. Look alive, make things easier for the extraction team. Stay awake or you may not wake up.

Eggsy feels cold all over.

The noise from the shootout right outside the alley barely registers in his mind anymore. He has no idea who his pursuers are shooting at if it’s not him- is it the police? Kingsman backup? Another jolly band of trigger-happy arm dealers from an enemy band?

Honestly, Eggsy couldn’t care less at the moment. He’s busy, what with bleeding out to death tucked between a trashcan and a pile of soggy cardboard boxes. Adrenaline may have taken the edge off the pain while he ran for his life, but there’s nothing to stave it off now. After pulling himself out of Amsterdam’s damned tepid waters it had taken him two blocks at a sprint to realize he’d been shot. Without stopping to take stock of the wound he can already tell that it’s not looking good. Now, with what seems to be all the time in the world, he sits on a murky rain puddle that is steadily turning redder and knows that this may very well be it for him.

“Galahad- Galahad! Stay awake boy, come on!” Desperation has finally seeped into Merlin’s usually calm and steady tone at Eggsy’s silence. He knows what this means. It ought to stirr something in him, but he’s not quite sure what. He doesn’t reply.

He wonders distantly if he is good enough for death. Wonders if this is the time he will be measured and not found lacking for once, if this is the time the darkness will come and never go away. And then,

“Eggsy”

Harry’s voice – the voice of a dead man- cuts through the haze that has settled around Eggsy’s head. Just his luck- it took him bleeding out to death for Harry’s ghost to come back. Either that or he’s hallucinating, but he can’t bring himself to care, gift horses and all that. He gets to hear his voice one last time and that’s enough for him. It’s ridiculous how something so little can hurt more than the gunshot wound in his gut, and embarrassing how disgustingly grateful he feels for this small mercy. He’s torn between wishing he would have passed out before it came to this and being glad he’s lasted long enough to hear it.

A low whine escapes him and with whatever lucidity Harry’s voice has dredged up in him he makes up his mind. No use in keeping up appearances while he lies dying on piss and blood soaked concrete, a whole time zone away from home. If he wants to talk –or groan, whine, whatever- to a fucking ghost while standing on death’s threshold he bloody will, glasses and audio feed be damned.

“Eggsy, you are about to be extracted. Do you copy?”

A strangled noise is all that his throat comes up with when he tries to reply. He thinks he may be crying, but he can’t be sure.

“Eggsy. Stay.”

 _But you didn’t_ , he wants to say. _You didn’t_.

“Stay.”

He closes his eyes as darkness starts creeping into his vision. A small part of him hopes this time it will take.

 

* * *

 

Eggsy comes to staring blearily at Kingsman’s infirmary’s ceiling.

He feels as if he’s being held underwater. His whole body feels weightless, just beyond his control, and what little he feels comes through muffled, so it takes him a couple of minutes of blinking owlishly before he registers the warm weight atop his right hand. It takes him even longer to turn his head enough to make out the figure slumped on a chair by his bed.

Harry Hart -killed in action, currently sleeping- is holding his hand.

 _Well then_ , he thinks just before the drugs pull him under again, _guess it did take, after all._

* * *

 

He wakes up again who knows how much later feeling like all the threats spat by the italian mafioso from two missions ago had come true.

That is not to say he feels like a human-meat pizza, which was the last stop in a long string of ridiculously clichéd threats, but he’s sure he’s not fallen that far off. It just feels like all the promises of endless violence and agony had been fulfilled and left him with a body that wasn’t good for anything other than becoming minced meat.

This little train of thought – by far the silliest one he’s ever had after waking up in the infirmary after a bad stint, what with the pizza metaphor and all that- is interrupted by a deep sigh at his right and yeah, okay, maybe he should stop thinking about shady Italian food and actually pay attention to his surroundings. Starting by one very tense looking Harry Hart, who’s sitting ramrod straight at his bedside.

To be quite honest he hadn’t given the notion of being dead much credit, and whatever delirious ideas he had about it had been wiped clean after the pain hit him as soon as he woke up. If there’s one thing you should get to avoid in the afterlife is physical pain, he thinks, and even though his memory of his last waking is fuzzy at best he doesn’t think he was hurting back then.

He does recall Harry quite clearly though, and the drug-laden jump of logic that led him to seriously think he had kicked the bucket after all. Harry had been holding his hand, of that his foggy memory is sure, and if there’s something Eggsy knows for sure about ghosts is that once they touch you that’s it— they are gone, gone for good, no take backs. Yet here he is, sitting primly in a suit that looks days away from the last time it saw a decent ironing, face a perfect study in blankness.

Eggsy feels beyond disgusted at the rush of relief that washes over him, how desperate he is to keep even the barest scrap of this man close _. Fucking pathetic_ , he thinks as he squirms a bit to get him fully into his vision field, which of course is what brings Harry out of his reverie and focusing on Eggsy the very next moment.

The first thing that strikes him is that Harry Hart –or rather, his ghost- looks tired, which is not something he’d even thought ghosts could do. The second thing is that the ghost is now opening his mouth as if to speak, and Eggsy panics, and when Eggsy panics-

“I see dead people”

\- his mouth runs away from him.

Fan- _fucking_ -tastic.

Here he is, lying half dead in the Infirmary, high on who knows how many meds and quoting ghost movies to an actual ghost like the damn loon he is.

He groans and flops back to his previous position, mortified. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Harry shifting on his chair and Eggsy is tempted to call in the nurse and straight out asking to be sedated to spare Harry any more absurd commentary –he must really be regretting coming back at this point, better try and not make this any worse than it already is- when the man shuffles forward and raises his arm towards Eggsy.

It’s instinctive: Eggsy flinches and scrambles back up the bed, getting as far away from Harry’s hand as he can. Part of him notes that he’s most likely pulled one or two stitches with that jerky move, but he couldn’t care less at the moment. All thoughts of salvaging the situation fly out the window. The heart-monitor, until now a steady background noise, starts beeping frantically as panic seizes him.

Harry is trying to touch him.

The thought hits him like a freight train and with it comes back flooding all the awful emotions and thoughts he’s carefully kept locked in the back of his head for the past few months. This is goodbye. Harry is saying goodbye. He’s trying to leave, this time for good, and Eggsy’s fucked up big time now, hasn’t he? He got his fairy tale second chance with Harry – no matter how fucked up his fairy tale must be to star a ghost as the romantic interest- and here he is, making a fool of himself instead of apologizing and trying to salvage what he can of their relationship. He screwed it, and now that Harry’s realized what he’s come back to –the street kid with a motor mouth, the failed candidate, the agent who was unable to pull the trigger- he wants to take it back and disappear from Eggsy’s life permanently. It’s the dog test all over again, with Eggsy on the wrong end of the gun and the man who already pulled the trigger once on the other.

He has lived without Harry Hart before and he has lived through losing him once. He’s not sure he would survive a second time.

“Please” he hears himself say “Please”

He doesn’t even know what he’s asking for and his head feels like it’s underwater and exploding at the same time- Eggsy is well aware that he’s panicking, but he could no sooner stop breathing than stave off the stampede of frantic thoughts currently running through his head. His heart-rate keeps climbing and he can’t seem to pull the right words forward to talk to Harry, to explain, to make him stay.

Harry’s expression becomes pinched, then resigned, and this is so, so much worse Eggsy thinks. This is not anger or disappointment. Harry is doing this out of pity, he’s giving Eggsy a mercy kill. His arm lowers and he reaches for the nurse call button instead.

Eggsy closes his eyes. He doesn’t need to see the moment Harry’s hand phases through it, doesn’t need to see surprise steal across his face, doesn’t need to see the disappointment, the resignation, _does Harry even realize he’s dead-_

“Please please please please please _please_ ”

Eggsy doesn’t hear the nurses coming in, or the hurried conversation happening over him. He thinks he hears Harry’s voice, but he can’t make out what he’s saying. The words have turned into noise inside his head and he’s still babbling when the darkness behind his closed lids starts to shift into something different, soothing and asphyxiating at the same time.

“Please please please don’t-”

Don’t touch me. Don’t leave me. Don’t go.

He slips into a dreamless sleep.

 

* * *

 

“Good morning, Eggsy”

This is how he has woken up every morning for the past week and a half: to the sound of Harry’s voice greeting him from where he’s lounging on an armchair, usually with a folder or a paperclip in hand.

For the longest time this had been one of his most prominent daydreams: getting to wake up to Harry’s voice, having him close enough to touch if only he was to reach out. Now it’s just part of a routine: Eggsy wakes up with Harry already in his room, who greets him good morning as if everything hadn’t gone terribly wrong less than three months ago, as if he hadn’t lost his shit merely days ago over seeing him. With his return come flooding back all the shame and heartbreak from their last conversation, the sour taste of Harry’s anger and disappointment still prominent at the back of his tongue. For all that he’d desperately wished for Harry to come back to him, reality is much more complicated to handle, and so he doesn’t.

Eggsy had woken up from his little lose-your-shit-and-get-sedated stunt to Merlin’s reproachful glare and Roxy’s insistent nudging to make room for her at his side on the bed. He’d mumbled a half-hearted “Sorry” because, really, what is there to say after you panic at seemingly thin air out of nowhere, and got a light punch from Roxy for his trouble.

“There’s nothing to apologize for, airhead” she’d said, smoothing a hand down the arm she’d just punched “It’s not every day that you die and live to tell”

That’s how he learns that he’d flatlined for a while during extraction. Both Merlin and Roxy play it off as if it were nothing, but he can feel the lingering tension in Merlin’s clipped and overly-technical words, in the way that Roxy’s hand has yet to leave his arm as she stretches at his side.

Harry had been nowhere in sight that morning, and Eggsy had just gone and accepted that he’d finally taken his leave once he’d been put under, not wanting to linger behind longer than what was strictly necessary. Eggsy carefully ignores the way his absence carves out a new hole in his heart and musters enough courage to smile at Roxy and start a quick-fire bantering with her. His visitors unwind after a bit, and they leave when he plays the tired patient card, not without promising to come back to check on him as soon as possible. Roxy kisses his temple and promises to bring him all sorts of tacky souvenirs when she comes back from her next mission; Merlin is to come back with Morgana, their chief doctor, sometime in the afternoon for a check-up. He really doesn’t see either him or the doctor, because his tiredness had been as much an excuse as a reality and he passes out once again as soon as they leave.

So it comes as a surprise –read: _fucking shock_ \- when he wakes up the next morning to a comfortably seated Harry and the first “Good morning, Eggsy” of the week, and honestly, Eggsy needs a break from this emotional rollercoaster. He gives up on trying to talk and make amends and just resigns himself to waiting for the conversation sure to come.

However, Harry doesn’t seem to be in a rush to bring their past row up anytime soon. He looks content enough to just sit there flipping through files, making mostly one-sided small talk with Eggsy about what missions Kingsman is currently running and the outcomes of the ones that have just finished. After a couple of days Eggsy starts participating in the conversations with some small remarks here and there if there’s no one around, but mostly he lies down and looks at Harry, really looks at him and tries to memorize all that he can for when he inevitably leaves. He drinks in the angle of his jaw, the subtle laughter lines around his lips, the hint of silver at his temple and both the warmth and the hardness of his eyes; he takes in the rosy starburst scar over his left eyebrow that wasn’t there before and wonders if he’s summoned it there himself out of decorum for Eggsy or out of vanity. Whatever it is, he’s grateful for it- he still has the image of James’s two halves burnt into his retinas and doesn’t think he could deal with Harry’s half-blown skull, no matter how much worse he’s seen –and inflicted- out there during his missions.

Whenever Morgana and Merlin come in for his check-ups he stands aside politely and they both listen on. When they leave he will sometimes follow Merlin out, but he always comes back. That’s part of a pattern: Harry will sometimes leave during the day, sometimes for hours on end, but he always comes back to Eggsy’s bedside. It’s not unusual for Harry’s voice to lull him to sleep at the end of the day.

So that’s basically what they do: Harry talks, talks and talks, and Eggsy just lies there looking at him and waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

 

* * *

 

Eggsy is a terrible patient.

That much has been true for as far as he can remember, and even further back if Michelle is to be trusted on this- and she is, seeing as it was her who suffered through his runny noses and itchy throats throughout his childhood. It was a small mercy that he had been a healthy child- he doubts they’d have survived otherwise, because a bedridden Eggsy was a miserable one, and that coupled with the unavoidable boredom of staying at home for days on end never led to anything good. Uncountable broken household items and one memorable make-over of his childhood bedroom –thanks to which he had discovered that mural painting could not be counted as one of his gifts-, Eggsy Unwin had grown up to be a much less destructive patient.

That is not to say he is a good one. His mom thought he had outgrown the phase where he’d sneak out while she was away, only to come back even sicker than before. Truth is, he had just become better at covering up his escapades. There were only so many movies and videogames that’d stave off cabin fever and it wouldn’t be long before he became twitchy and irritable with the need to get out. As long as he was stealthy – because Michelle had recruited the neighbor’s help to keep an eye out for her sneaky son- and timed it well he’d be able to escape house arrest and stretch his legs for a bit.

That habit hasn’t changed a bit, even after becoming part of Kingsman. It’s not the first time he’s stayed over at the Infirmary –far from it, which is not weird considering his line of work- and so the nurses start throwing him suspicious glances as soon as he’s able to walk again. He can’t blame them: it’s become a bit of a pastime for him to try and see how many times he can sneak out of the ward without them noticing, to the point where Merlin has given them permission to sedate him on sight if they ever catch him out of his room unaccompanied.

Far from deterring him, this has only spurred Eggsy on, finding increasingly creative ways to slip under their radar. It has led to quite a few glorious escapes (like the time they found him at the manor’s small dog kennel hours after his disappearance, effectively covered in puppies, with a dopey smile on his face and the fever he’d been nursing now running rampant) and a couple disastrous ones (like that one time when a faux ceiling tile had given out under him and he’d crashed down in the middle of the ward’s break room- he’s still sore that cheap building materials had managed to trample his escape attempt).

His extensive knowledge of the ward’s layout and shift times comes in handy now: he knows the best places for hiding and the best times for sneaking out, which is swell, because the last thing he wants right now is to stay at his room.

Harry hasn’t tried to touch him again, and the resigned waiting of the first days is quickly turning into anxiously dreading the moment the other shoe drops. Being shot in the gut means that he’s bedridden for the better part of the day, and he’d been given the stink eye from the nurses for even daring suggest a small walk down the hallways. He’s not new to cabin fever and it’s starting to drive him up the walls, all similes of companionable silences and easy chatter turning into grating hours that seem to stretch on forever. He’s effectively caged in with a ticking time-bomb and he’s too much of a coward to even think of asking Harry to get it over with, to just say his piece and leave Eggsy to rebuild from the wreckage once he’s gone.

Which logically leaves him with only one other choice: escaping.

Having your guts punctured is not conductive to sneaking away, Eggsy has found, but he’s a natural and has already had his small victories during this particular stay in the ward. He’d snuck out and into the meds storage room once right after one of Merlin’s visits when Harry followed the man out, twice right before midday’s shift ended when the nurses were idle and more busy looking at the wall clock than paying attention to the resident patients, and most notably in the middle of the night.

It never ceases to befuddle him how careless the medical personnel can be when it comes to security risks, never mind that they work for an actual international security agency of sorts. As soon as the clock hits 2am the lights on the main corridors are remotely dimmed to a soft ambient glow, some of the unused sections falling into downright pitch black darkness. It renders the halls a harsh territory for the security cameras, Eggsy thinks, making it hard to pick out moving figures in the dim hallways and downright impossible in the ones that have the lights turned off. It could very well be that the seemingly innocuous cameras were in fact high-tech ones capable of night-vision –he would not put it past Merlin to be an actual control freak that way- but if anyone back at control room has caught him sneaking out they’ve yet to do something about it, so Eggsy figures he’s good for now.

He wakes up in the wee hours of the night –early morning?- covered in cold sweat and having thoroughly trashed the bedding . These days the routine is already settled: he scrubs his face at the sink, forgoes the shower and goes to haunt the corridors until he can make the church bells go away. Sometimes he pushes his luck and sneaks out for a bit of fresh air- anything to take his mind off the sight of Valentine pulling the trigger on Harry. He avoids looking at the plush seat by his bed when he makes for the door- he’s not quite sure what he wants to avoid seeing, Harry’s ghost there or its absence.

Tonight’s especially rough. His head has deemed it fit to treat him with the usual bloody scenes from the church, but this time when the glasses feed turned towards Valentine it was a blood-covered Harry who was holding the gun. “Harry, please” he hears himself choke out. He can’t move. He can’t even raise his arms in surrender- he’s a mere spectator to his own execution. The man stares at him for the longest time without a word before the safety clicks off and the damned bells start chiming louder and louder. The shot wakes him up every time.

He shakes himself from the memory, a shuddering exhale escaping him as he tries his best to navigate the deserted corridor without a light in sight. He’s not quite sure when his feet have taken him here and he quietly curses himself for not paying attention- getting back to his room now could easily become a serious pain in the ass and he can already feel the drugs wear off.

He’s just thinking of calling out for a nurse when he takes a blind sharp left and comes face-first with a wall. A breathing, warm wall that Eggsy finds himself clutching at to regain his balance.

“God, I’m so sorry I just-“ he begins, but the apology dies a quick death as the smell of a very familiar aftershave hits him.

“Eggsy? Are you quite alright?” Harry asks in a concerned tone as his hand comes out of the darkness to hold Eggsy’s elbow. As if touching him is no big deal. As if he was really there. “Do you need me to-“

“Shut up”

He decides right then and there that he’ll take back all the church nightmares his head wants to throw at him just so he can escape this particular one. He’ll trade in the blink of an eye this for the known-horror of the slaughter, because there are no words for what this one is doing to his heart at the moment, the barely held together pieces already shaking loose and apart again.

Eggsy closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing as he wills himself to wake up. A small part of him idly wonders what is it that he’d done in all his past lives to merit this kind of cruelty, this fucked-up nightmare.

Time ticks by.

Eggsy doesn’t wake up screaming.

Harry doesn’t disappear into thin air.

Eventually the pain from his wounds becomes too sharp to ignore. Eggsy counts his blessings that there’s no light to make this all the more difficult as he raises a hand towards what he hopes is Harry’s neck. It lands instead on a strong shoulder –a solid, warm shoulder that’s undeniably there under his hand- and it slowly makes its way up until he has his palm cupped around the man’s throat.

 

 

There it is, like the biggest raised finger at the laws of life and death. A steady, fluttering pulse that shakes the foundation of what Eggsy’s life has been for the past few months. He leans in until he can bury his face on the other side of Harry’s neck and takes a deep breath.

“I” he begins, and then stops to clear his throat when his voice catches “I” he starts again “think you may be alive”.

Eggsy feels a set of fingers making their way slowly up his forearm and come to rest cradling the wrist of the hand at his throat. An arm comes to circle his waist, pulling him in gently and Eggsy just lets himself be held for the time being.

“I think you may be right” comes Harry’s voice in the dark. His tone could almost be thought of as amused, but there’s a pointed tightening of the fingers over Eggsy’s pulse. They both know better.

No other word passes between them as the minutes go by.

Eggsy Unwin remains awake.

Harry Hart remains alive under the palm of his hand.

 

* * *

 

They don’t bother with the lights when they make it to the room. It’s just as well, because a part of Eggsy is still convinced that Harry will fade away once morning comes and if remaining in the dark is the price he has to pay for keeping him a bit longer then so be it. Harry makes a bee line for the seat by the bed but is stopped by Eggsy reaching out and grabbing his wrist. He pulls him towards the bed tentatively and Harry doesn’t need to be told twice. Soon enough they are lying tangled on the single bed that’s definitely not meant for two fully grown adults. Silence wraps around them comfortable and secretive.

Eggsy is all but knocked out when Harry’s voice rouses him. “I’m sorry, Eggsy” he feels more than hears the man whisper in his hair “I’m so, so sorry” he presses against his temple, fingers carding gently through his hair.

He says nothing- lets the hand he places over the man’s heart speak for him and the steady heartbeat that meets him lull him to sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

The first morning lights rouses him just enough to find Harry’s fond gaze on him. It feels natural to lean up and brush his lips against the man’s in a chaste, slow kiss. It’s nothing like the one they’d shared so long ago against the wall in Harry’s house. That one had ignited and encouraged a raging fire inside of him, whereas this one warms him up from the inside out slowly, melting away the cold Eggsy hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying inside his chest.

They kiss leisurely, as if they have all the time in the world to discover and learn each other. Between roaming hands and lazy sighs, Harry’s hand cups his jaw as he shifts the angle slightly to deepen the kiss. A quiet moan escapes him unbidden and he feels Harry smirk against his lips and bite down slightly.

“Oh thank Christ”

Eggsy hadn’t even thought it possible for a hard-on to die this fast, but Merlin’s voice seems to do the trick just fine. Harry groans aloud and buries his face in Eggy’s neck.

“Bloody time you two got that out of the way.” The man huffs as he strolls to the bed and pointedly leaves a couple of files on the bedside table “Now Harry, would you be a dear and stop being an ass about taking the Arthur mantle? I am going to murder someone gruesomely if I have to assign one more mission myself” He stands by with his hands on his hips. Neither Harry nor Eggsy make a move to detangle from each other.

With something that sounds a lot like “kids these days” Merlin rolls his eyes and takes his dignified leave with two raised fingers saluting his back.

 

* * *

 

Things are awful for a while.

Okay, maybe not awful-awful, but Eggsy is now more ready than ever to leave the ward and get his stitches removed. His impatience is completely justified, he tells Roxy one day, what with the “piece of fine ass” that’s waiting for him once he gets out, he finishes with the sauciest wink he can come up with directed at said piece of ass sitting not an arm’s length from them. Harry just rolls his eyes at him and goes back to reading this or that file, but he doesn’t bother hiding the small smile that softens his face.

It becomes a hobby of sorts for Roxy, watching how fast Harry can placate Eggsy when he’s in a mood just by letting one of his hands casually cover one of the younger man’s. Her phone becomes an ultra-tight secret stash of pictures of both Eggsy and Harry looking dopey at each other- those he shares only with Merlin when it becomes a tad too much and they commiserate over their lovey dovey overdoses with some fine scotch.

Once they are out, though.

Eggsy has felt Harry’s hand at the lowest of his back like a brand since they left the cab. The driver had taken them straight to Harry’s house without a word, and now he waits with bated breath as Harry opens the door and his hand guides him in. He feels more than hears the door close at his back as he grabs the man by the collar of his shirt and pushes him against it. There’s a small, knowing smile on Harry’s lips as he leans back and draws Eggsy towards him just enough to nip his bottom lip.

“Eager, are we now?” Harry breathes against his lips. Eggsy can almost taste his smile, could try to if he wanted, but Harry is staring at him with such devotion, like he would like nothing more than to fall on his knees and worship him for the rest of his life and Eggsy may have been the object of a myriad of feelings –anger, lust, fear- but he doesn’t quite know what to do with that.

“You have no idea” he mumbles before diving in.

It’s nothing like the first time they kissed, against a wall on this very same house. It seems like a lifetime ago, and in a sense it is, both for Harry and for Eggsy, one a death cheater and the other cheated by death. It seems only fitting that they get to share this new life, with all the frayed, cutting edges their deaths brought to it. Some of it bleeds into the long, increasingly desperate kisses they share, in the way that Eggsy’s knuckles are white with tension against Harry’s shirt, in the shaking of Harry’s hands that disappears when they bury themselves in Eggsy’s hair.

Harry’s fingers are reverent on his skin when he lays him out on the bed, mindful of the bandages on his abdomen. His mouth ghosts briefly over them before he moves down the bed and starts kissing his inner thighs, making his breath catch. Sex has never been like this, something to share rather than to take and give- intimacy had never been on the books for him and whoever he got to fuck.

He’s never had someone of his own, someone to hold him through the shaking and the gasping as he falls and drowns into molten brown eyes staring up at him like the universe is cradled in his spasming fingers. “Beautiful, so beautiful, Eggsy” he hears the man murmur against his skin. He forgets to breathe as he watches Harry’s mouth envelope him, feels his mouth fall open and something tiny and broken escape his lips as a finger finds its way inside of him.

Harry’s hand pushes down above his hips when his back arches, sushing him when the slow burn turns into a scorching blaze that consumes him from the inside out and he whimpers and he shakes apart and falls, falls, falls. He opens his eyes just enough to watch as something flares bright in Harry’s eyes before receding. Hope, maybe. Fear. He has no name for it but he understands it because he feels it, knows the shape it takes when it settles deep in his bones. For now he’s content enough to pull Harry up and kiss him slow and languid. His hand trails down Harry’s shoulder blade before coming around and reaching for him. The quiet gasp that elicits from the man is something Eggsy would do terrible, terrible things to hear again.

“My darling” the man says when he lets him up, Eggsy’s cock quickly hardening again “you’ve never looked more beautiful” He just smiles and keeps Harry right where he can drink down all the noises he makes. A hard twist gets him a low, strangled sound, Harry’s body undulating over him as the man struggles to stay put and not rut straight into Eggsy’s fist. “My dear” he pants against his lips as he brings their foreheads together. Harry’s hand finds its way back on him, fingers closing over hardening flesh and starting a maddeningly tame pace. The undignified whine that gets him brings a smile to Harry’s lips, and then a curse, as Eggsy begins paying the head of Harry’s dick some extra attention. The man buries his face on the side of Eggsy’s neck, where he sucks on the sweaty skin until he bites down and muffles a long, low moan as he comes all over Eggsy’s stomach. Shuddering as he is, he still doesn’t pick up the pace on Eggsy’s dick, his strokes slow yet ungentle, just the right side of rough. The steady stream of curses falling from Eggsy’s lips becomes increasingly disjointed and incoherent as the pleasure coils tighter and tighter in his belly, his orgasm drawing inexorably closer with every torturous stroke. When it finally crashes on him he’s pretty sure the combined relief and pleasure blind him for a moment as he whines and trashes against the sheets, Harry milking him through it all. The man eases up when the breathless groans turn into tiny noises of discomfort, reaching for the bedside table’s box of tissues before lowering himself from his propped up position until he’s laying half-on top of Eggsy. He makes quick work of wiping them clean and tosses the balled-up tissues over his shoulder unceremoniously before snaking his arms around Eggsy’s middle and snuggling close.

They lay in the dark until Eggsy musters the courage to break the silence. “Stay.” He orders rather than asks with a steady voice. Harry’s arms tighten around him. “Stay” comes the answer against his collarbone, equal parts demanding and begging. It is all that he’s asked for and all that he can give in exchange. Eggsy hums and rests his cheek atop Harry’s head, fingers drawing patterns on his wide shoulders.

It’s the first time in months Eggsy won’t be waking up with a gunshot ringing in his ears.

 

* * *

 

It’s not easy, not by a long shot.

There are the bad nights, where one’s screaming nightmares will wake the other, marking the start of the long walk to guide them far from the dark places in their heads. There’s Harry’s pride and Eggsy’s stubbornness, immovable objects meeting unstoppable forces. There are the insecurities and doubts surfacing at the worst possible moments, when they let numbers and time weigh on them. The slight tremor that runs through Harry’s hands every now and then, driving him mad. The times his eyes look far, far away and time slips through his fingers. There are the scars left over from Kentucky and the months Harry spent dead and the time Eggsy wished he was and the sea of blood that seems to haunt them no matter what, so no, it’s not easy.

What’s easy is this:

How Eggsy’s hand fits in Harry’s, two ragged puzzle pieces miraculously fitting together against all odds. Harry’s smile whenever Eggsy steals a kiss out in public. The way Harry holds him just a tad bit closer when Eggsy is shaking apart in his arms, coming undone under his hands. The sound of each other’s voices guiding them through the dark and away from what lurks in there.

The mornings Eggsy wakes up to Harry’s gaze on him, eyes brimming with warmth, with fondness, _with love_.

 

* * *

 

Gawain is a tall, lanky man in his late thirties that looks permanently sleep-deprived. Eggsy’s not fooled for a minute- he’s seen the agent take down half a dozen armed guards with a pen and his shoe-laces. He can respect a man who garrotes his way out of a bad situation, and he lets the man know as much as soon as he meets him face to face. What the glasses feed didn’t convey was Gawain’s penchant for terrible puns delivered in the most deadpan tone Eggsy’s ever heard. It’s fantastic. They get on like a house on fire.

Thanks to his trademark Pain In The Ass techniques, he gets assigned as Gawain’s support for a rather simple mission as soon as he’s cleared for field duty. During debrief he meets Gawain The Agent, who’s not so prone to letting his humor run free. It’s a bit of a let down, but just what Eggsy needs to get his head back in the game. It’s a simple surveillance task, some reconnaissance, the usual boring stuff. He’ll be in and out, scoping some sort of underground storage facility while Gawain's cover distracts the baddies upstairs. He tells Harry as much as he leaves HQ- he kisses the frown the man’s sporting and silently thanks him for not starting last night’s argument again.

Harry had been vehemently opposed to sending him out this early, but it’s not like he had any other option- that much Eggsy knew and told the man. Valentine’s day had hit Kingsman hard. With Arthur fell Caradoc, Kay and Bors, leaving the round table lighter in personnel than what any of them were comfortable with. The tech department had fewer losses, but still substantial enough that Eggsy barely saw Merlin these days. Same went for Roxy, who was more often than not found flying across the globe, jet-lag at her heels whenever Eggsy caught her at the shop or back in the manor.

They can’t spare a capable trained agent, is Eggsy’s point. No matter how much Harry would love to secret him away in their house until Amsterdam is just an old memory instead of a still pink scar on the left of his bellybutton.

It’s clear as day the mission is anything but simple once he’s gotten inside the drug cartel’s poorly lit basement and found cages upon cages of animals. For a moment that’s what he thinks, just some side illegal animal trafficking to go with the drug business- that is, until he slips towards the door at the front and the emergency light falls straight into one of them.

Dozens of terrified, terribly human eyes look back at him through the bars.

“Oh shit. Oh God” he whispers as the captives shy away from him, piling on each other on the farthest side of their cages. His hand flies up to the button in his glasses that will ping an alarm back to Merlin “HQ, this is Galahad. Are you getting this?” He hears Merlin cursing loudly in his ears and a spitfire discussion breaking out between him and Harry over the line.

“Galahad,” Harry’s voice breaks through, “stand by. Try and see if they understand English”

“Understood” he answers as he slowly approaches the nearest cage. Once he’s within arm’s reach Eggsy kneels down, lifting his arms with his palms wide open and empty for all to see. “Hello” he begins calmly “I am here to help. Do any of y-“

He never finds out if they understand any of what he’s saying because just then an alarm starts wailing over his head just as Merlin starts cursing. “Bugger” he mutters as he stands up once again. Before turning away he looks straight into the cage and tries to infuse as much confidence into what he says as he can “I am not leaving you behind. I promise you. We are getting you out of here”. He doesn’t linger to figure out if they understood him this time- Eggsy turns tail and sprints towards the staircase he came in through.

In an unfortunate turn of events, a hail of bullets greets him there.

The suit does its job and protects him from the worst of it, but the sprint back towards the front of the room is a far more painful one. He can feel the bruises blooming across his chest as he runs, the scar from Amsterdam radiating its own muted sort of pain.

“Galahad, get out of there immediately by any means necessary. The blueprints Gawain shared with you are the only information we have on the layout of the base.” comes Merlin’s clipped words through the glasses. “I’m trying, Merlin” Eggsy pants. He wonders idly why Harry’s not freaking out aloud, but it’s probably for the best Eggsy doesn’t have his lover losing it in his ears as he runs for his life. He loses his glasses taking a sharp left that sends him tumbling on the floor in an effort to avoid a new burst of gunfire.

He’s almost out of breath by the time he reaches the other door, only to find it locked. A metallic number pad stares mockingly at him by the handle. Taking out his guns he turns around to face his attackers and almost shoots Gawain point-blank as the man comes skidding out of the shadows unannounced. It’s a miracle he doesn’t pull the trigger on him out of sheer surprise- bastard’s silent as a mouse.

“528491!” he yells as he gets closer “The code! 528491!”

Without a moment to spare, Eggsy punches in the code and pushes the door open as soon as it unlocks, slamming it shut the moment Gawain’s through. “Good to see you in once piece, boy” the man says by greeting “I almost thought I was too late when I heard the shots in the basement. Say- are you feeling well enough to lead them on a merry chase?” He asks with a grin. Eggsy lets his smile and the sound of his gun’s safety being unlocked answer for him.

They fly down what feels like a maze of twisting corridors that all look exactly the same to Eggsy. He’s fairly sure he’d have been a dead man by now were it not for Gawain leading the way, taking the turns without hesitation and navigating the base with ease. Whatever resistance they meet on the way is shot down in favor of not losing momentum- not Eggsy’s favorite approach, but still an effective one, he can recognize as they reach a big set of half-open metallic doors. Without stopping, he shoves at them with his shoulder and stumbles into wide room without a ceiling- a parking of sorts.

The natural light coming from the sky is a nice change from the artificial lights in the basement. What’s not so nice is the sea of armed men awaiting them there.

He takes a shaky breath, but before he can start contemplating how awful his immediate demise will be something golden catches his eye as it falls amidst the men. On instinct he drops on a crouch and covers his head just in time as the lighter grenade explodes, taking down a fair share of goons. He watches in awe as Harry somersaults over a parked car and descends on them in a flurry of lethal grace and violence. Without thinking twice Eggsy joins the fray and gets lost in the brutal dance that ensues.

Eggsy catches glimpses of Harry now and then- sees him dislocate a man’s arm and use him as a human shield as Eggsy’s going for an aerial take-down, makes out the back of the man’s pinstriped suit bending backwards to avoid a slashing knife as he crouches to wipe out the legs from under two henchmen. While the men keep the guns quiet in fear of shooting each other it seems like they actually have a chance, but it would seem that having the odds stacked against you does terrible things to in-group loyalty because it’s not long before bullets are flying everywhere. Five minutes into the fight finds Harry and Eggsy crouched behind a rusty van.

“Your glasses.” Harry rasps as he unloads an empty clip and snaps a new one in place. His hair is falling over the glasses, sweat and blood obliterating his usually perfect coiffed style “Merlin lost your feed as I was making my way here. We thought we may have lost you as well” His calm intonation does nothing to hide the tension under his words, the tightly-controlled anxiety that won’t let him meet Eggsy’s eyes. The younger man reloads and lets their shoulders brush behind their makeshift cover.

“Yeah, well” he licks his dry lips. His tongue tastes blood- not his own, he hopes. “Thought as much myself before Gawain came outta nowhere and saved my ass with his godsent security codes. Wouldn’t ‘ave made it this far without him leading- place’s a damn nightmare. Speaking of, where’s he?” He risks a glance over the hood of the van.

Gawain is standing not two feet from the traffickers without a care in the world, peering curiously over their shoulders.

“GAWAIN WHAT ON EARTH” he can’t help yelling. His mind is running frantically through all the possible outcomes. Has the man turned on them? Are the men so focused on reloading that they haven’t noticed him? Maybe if he causes a distraction he could-

“What? It’s not like they can hurt me” the man yells back. Eggsy’s far too distraught to dwell on just what the man meant by that “Get your ass to cover for Christ’s sake!” he shouts back when one of the henchmen turns around and fires a round right through Gawain… and straight at Eggsy.

“See? Told you.” he hears as he ducks just in time to avoid having his brains splattered all over the car. He closes his eyes for a moment and tries to regroup his thoughts, pushes down the spike of sadness that surges through him and focuses on getting them out of there. If only they could get through the men and head for the exit doors behind them…

“Who are you talking to?” Harry asks at his left. Eggsy groans and keeps his eyes shut. He’s far too tired to lie “…Gawain” he answers reluctantly. He opens his eyes to find said agent crouched in front of them, eyes going back and forth between Harry and him. “Ah. He doesn’t know.” “No. And I didn’t know about _you_ ” At Eggsy’s head shake he frowns “I’m sorry, Eggsy. I didn’t realize you thought I was alive. My cover got blown a bit after I let you in- they went easy enough on me thanks to you grabbing their attention. So, thank you, in a way.” He finishes awkwardly. Eggsy acknowledges him with a tired nod, aware that he’s well past the point where he could play this whole conversation off as a simple product of a concussion. Brain damage doesn’t come with unusual insight on the security codes of human traffickers.

Gawain’s eyes fleet back upwards to the hood of the car before he gets back to business “I don’t think I can be of further assistance, but I can tell you they are coming up short on bullets. May I suggest a distraction of some kind before they open fire first?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was going for before you almost gave me a heart attack back there” he says as he chances a look at Harry. “A distraction?” the older man asks, voice level and face unreadable. Eggsy nods once again and without another word they part to scout the area around the car in search of something to use.

It’s Eggsy who recognizes the dusty spray paint cans for the chance at freedom they are. He hurriedly collects as many as he can before scurrying closer to Harry, handing him the cans and taking out his gun.

“Do me a favor” he says, pausing to listen to the men approaching the car. They are close, but still not close enough “on my mark, throw these over the hood, yeah? Don’t aim for them just- make them arch, yeah? I need to hit them” At Harry’s swift nod he scoots over to press a chaste kiss on the man’s lips before retreating back against the wheel. He can hear their attackers shuffling closer- they are trying to be quiet, but it’s painfully obvious that they have not been trained for stealth. Eggsy looks at Gawain, who’s peering over the hood with his hand raised slightly towards him. “I count 14- good job earlier, you managed to wipe off over half of them. Tons of ammo wasted, a number of them will come at you with blunt weapons and some nasty looking knives” Eggsy relays the information to Harry, who throws his arm back and gets ready to throw the cans.

It strikes him in that moment how blindly Harry’s following his lead, how there was no doubt or suspicion in his eyes as he listened to him, but before he can follow that train of thought Gawain’s hand comes down. No sooner Eggsy’s barked out a “Now!”, Harry’s arm tenses and the cans go flying. Eggsy stands up and shoots each of the cans as they fall on their assailants, the pressurized paint exploding over their heads in a colorful cloud. They jump out of their cover and all hell breaks loose.

He doesn’t recall the moment he runs out of bullets, but he does remember the moment something primal takes over and he ditches his favorite knife in order to meet flesh with flesh, his hands at their throats, his muscles snapping their bones. His body is as much of weapon as anything Kingsman can provide him with, was one long before they stamped their logo over his name.

Eggsy loses Harry –loses _himself_ \- in the middle of the violence. Feeds off the silence flooding his head, the sharp clarity of action and reaction, wounds he didn’t even know he carried being soothed by the death he deals those who would see him and Harry dead. Lets himself find peace in this small war for a moment, in the warmth of the blood coating his hands, in the balanced weight of the blade that finds its way back to his hand in no time.

The crash from that particular high is never a gentle one.

They barely make it out as it is. Eggsy looks up from the bodies at his feet to find Harry covered in blood- doesn’t have to look down at his own slippery hands because he knows what he’ll find there. He hasn’t lost control, not completely- he knows exactly how many men and women he’s just killed, how he’d taken each and every life. He limps through what seems like a sea of bodies until he reaches Harry, who hasn’t moved since the last wet, sickening crunch echoed against the concrete walls. The hand he raises towards the man’s face matches in color the cheek it cups. Harry’s eyes look haunted, his gaze lost. Eggsy knows just where –when- the man is.

“It’s August the 20th, 2015” he rasps, the familiar words ragged as they fall from his lips. Harry startles, unseeing eyes snapping to Eggsy’s face. He doesn’t stop “You are in London, in some wannabe Kingpin’s basement.” Against all training and common sense, Eggsy drops his weapon and raises his other hand to frame Harry’s face. The sound of the blade hitting the ground makes Harry flinch minutely “The people we just killed ran a human trafficking ring. I was sent in for reconnaissance and things took a twist for the worst. You showed up just in time, Harry” stands on his tiptoes and leans forward until their foreheads bump together “Just in time.” He repeats for good measure.

“We are still alive” he whispers against Harry’s lips, as if they weren’t the only two breathing souls in the room, like a secret only they should be privy to.

It takes them a while to believe it again.

 

* * *

 

 

It takes a long, long time for the water to run clear.

They stand under the hot spray for what feels like an eternity, with Eggsy’s arms loosely looped around Harry’s waist and his head tucked under the man’s chin. It’s part of their little rituals, the way they ground themselves when quiet turns violent- they get in the shower and hold onto each other, skin on skin, letting the sound of the falling water fill in the spaces that words couldn’t. Sometimes it’s Harry burying his nose in Eggsy’s damp hair for so long that their skin wrinkles- other times it’s Eggsy who clings to Harry until he can find his voice again.

It’s Harry who gently motions for them to sit down on the wet tiles, pulling Eggsy down on his lap so they are chest to chest. One of his hands starts massaging away the tension in the corded muscles in Eggsy’s nape. The younger man hums appreciatively, letting his head rest on Harry’s shoulder and closing his eyes. He knows what’s coming.

“ ‘I see dead people’ “, Harry quotes slowly. He says nothing. “It wasn’t a joke.” He states this rather than asks, but Eggsy still hums his assent, shrugging slightly before holding Harry just a tad closer. He’s still not quite sure how he’s going to explain this –them- to Harry, but he knows the conversation is inevitable. He braces himself for a barrage of questions, for the doubt, the suspicion- avoids thinking of what will happen if Harry’s warm eyes turn on him cold and untrusting, or worse yet, pitying and concerned.

“Okay” says Harry instead, and the free-fall Eggsy’s heart just began experiencing slows down and just… stops, just to soar at his next words. “I love you” he says, so naturally that Eggsy forgets to question it and just accepts it like this man’s love is something that belongs to him, something he can and will keep. He leans up to kiss Harry’s lips, lingering and with infinite tenderness.

“I love you”, he says when they part, breathing deep and painless and free. In the quiet, wet silence of the shower, Eggsy finds himself with no secrets for the first time in his life and feels no fear.

“Later” he promises quietly.

“Later” Harry accepts, his hand finding Eggsy’s and holding on tight.

 

* * *

 

Later, Eggsy will find the right words to weave a story of ice and death and loss for Harry to understand the way the world stops when you love a ghost.

 

Later, Harry will tell him how the sky shakes and falls down in pieces when the church bells chime for you and you alone.

 

Later, they will stitch themselves together once again, rise victorious from their downfall and face the world as one, self-made and staggeringly whole by their own rights.

 

* * *

 

It’s not easy, no.

 

But it’s well worth it.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> And that's a wrap! Thank you for reading!!!
> 
> PLEASE look up my amazing artist in tumblr: http://meetingyourmaker.tumblr.com/  
> Hit me up if you want to at http://bruises-for-tomorrow.tumblr.com/


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